Editor's note: This is the third installment of the new TECK TALK column. In the first column, we talked about lowering barriers to entry. Second, we talked about the need for innovation relationships to be mutually beneficial in order to be sustainable.
The author is also a composer (trained at Juilliard), so we've created a piece for you to listen to while reading this column. The title of the work is “The Rise Prelude.” It was originally written for guitar and later expanded for orchestra.
The time has come for all of us to develop a more comfortable relationship with artificial intelligence (AI). At least for today, I call this “AI rapport.” Unlike AI, the word rapport can at least be defined. My Mac's dictionary defines rapport as a close, harmonious relationship in which the people or groups involved understand each other's feelings and thoughts and are able to communicate well.
AI is the most powerful and therefore the most important thing happening in the world right now. It's a game changer as important as cars and computers. It is very important to limit your understanding to secondary information. Must be experienced personally. Everyone claims to know about it, and every company claims to have it built into their products, but there is a very direct and free way to form an opinion.
Everyone claims to know about it, and every company claims to have it built into their products, but there is a very direct and free way to form an opinion.
Understanding AI, especially complex concepts like Chat GPT, requires more than just reading what others have to say or listening to what others have to say. It requires personal exploration and curiosity.
Visit https://chat.openai.com/auth/login, create a free account, log in, and play around with a few questions to find out what it is and what it does. Experience it firsthand. You can learn a lot in less than 5 minutes.
In today's world, having a comfortable relationship with artificial intelligence (AI) is essential. At first glance, it may be tempting to ignore and choose to ignore the relevance of AI to our lives. Recent arguments, such as his Feb. 14 article in the New York Times, “When your technical skills are disappearing, your humanity matters more than ever,” suggest otherwise. I am.
We have all been using artificial intelligence for a very long time. I studied artificial intelligence in college in his mid-'70s, and by the time I got my master's degree in electrical engineering in 1980, I was being hired by companies working on voice recognition. Speech recognition, by the way, is a moderately popular form of AI.
If you're using voice recognition, you're using AI. All of our GPS systems are another form of AI that helps us get our location. AI is also used in Google searches for just about any topic on the internet. It has now become a ubiquitous buzzword, and almost every company can claim to be using AI. This is easily explained as they have been using AI for decades already.
AI is embedded in our digital interactions. What sets AI apart today is its increased versatility and ability to engage in conversational interaction. This is an unprecedented advance. GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer, an increasingly popular and ubiquitous form of AI today.
This is a big deal and I remember when I was 17 years old in 1970. I had to change my mindset that it was a waste of time to understand that computers are so powerful that I can no longer ignore them. It became clear to him more than 50 years ago that if you wanted to get a degree in science or engineering, you had to learn how to use a computer. There was no choice left.
Now, 50 years later, I have come to the same conclusion about artificial intelligence. Except this time, this is too powerful to ignore. However, this doesn't just apply to those who want a science or engineering degree. This applies to anyone who wants to communicate in writing, almost all experts in any field. Writers who use artificial intelligence to assist with grammar, spelling, and other types of editing processes will likely outperform those who don't.By the way, don't you think that grammar and spell checking are also artificial intelligence?
Artificial general intelligence has come a long way since last March, when I first started considering using Chat GPT. I can't remember any other technology in my life that has advanced so rapidly and been so widely adopted. A year ago, I asked if I could trust the opinions of Chat GPT and was told no. Chat GPT said he didn't know the difference between a romance novel and a doctoral dissertation. There was no way to know what was true or false just by reading everything there.
This is still the case. We still cannot trust artificial intelligence to know the difference between wrong and right. There's no way to tell that. This is not a good enough excuse to ignore it. We must learn to live in harmony with it. That's why I mention AI rapport.
When using a GPS system in your car, you will often receive meaningless direction instructions, such as being asked to make a sharp left turn toward the ocean while driving along a coastal road. Is this an excuse not to use GPS? No, of course I use GPS, but I know I still have to decide whether to listen to it or not.
The same goes for hiring professionals such as doctors and lawyers. We need to decide whether the advice we receive makes sense. AI also belongs to the same category. Although this information is very useful, there is a possibility that meaningless information may be hallucinated. Have you ever asked someone a question and received an answer that doesn't make sense? Of course you have.
We each need to understand all the information that comes into our lives. Otherwise, you will be constantly driven to distraction. If you try to use speech recognition, as I am currently doing when writing this column, you end up transcribing a lot of gibberish. And I have to get rid of them. When you use GPS to get to a location in a familiar area, you often have to ignore it. When you do a Google search, much of the information returned is a waste of time. It still makes sense to use voice recognition, GPS systems, and Google search, but you must take responsibility for using your own intelligence as the final arbiter of information.
I can no longer beat a computer at chess, but I have no fear of being replaced by AI. Don't give in to fear mongering. There's no need to fear AI and don't ignore it. Use your own judgment. Try it out and see how you feel.
But regardless of how you feel, you still need to build a trusting relationship with it. It remains everywhere, and those who use it perform better than those who don't.
