ChatGPT fever spreads to US workplace, sounding alarm for some
Many workers across the U.S. are turning to ChatGPT to help with basic tasks, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found, despite fears that have led employers such as Microsoft and Google to curb its use.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-fever-spreads-us-workplace-sounding-alarm-some-2023-08-11/Open linkView original on kbin.social
Except I actually do know fully grown adults who can't do basic arithmetic if it's more complex than adding two two-digit numbers together and have to rely on their phone. You still should learn the basics. I prefer not to live in a world of magical black boxes where I don't understand how they work.
If we let the machines do all the thinking for us, why are we even here? They are supposed to make mundane tasks easier and faster, not replace actual learned knowledge. There's nothing wrong with having an LLM write you a letter or an essay and automate some things, there IS something wrong if you yourself don't know how to do it.
If you read one of the protest signs, you'll see them saying the exact same thing. They have no issues with using calculators. They have issues with kids not actually learning math and using them at too young of an age.
To have a good time?
You may find value in being able to do basic arithmetic and knowing how to write an essay, and that's perfectly fine. But other people have different sets of values. One of those never-wrote-an-essay people out there may scoff at your inability to change your own car's oil, for example. Or the fact that you never learned a second language. Everyone has different interests and places different values on various skills and I see nothing wrong with a technology that lets us skip out on the ones that we don't want to bother learning. It'd be a problem if civilization collapsed, of course, but that would be a problem for a great many bigger reasons than having few people who can write an essay on their own.
Then eventually we are going to have another great division in society. A small group of people with the interest and drive to be able to learn enough to peek behind the curtains of our tech and be able to understand and manipulate it, and a much larger group of people who are going to be manipulated by them while blind to that fact. I see knowledge like open source software. It should be open, free, and distributed as far and as wide as possible. Not just for a small select group of nerds. If we are to go all in on AI, then we need to start creating some classes and lessons on it starting in elementary school to teach EVERYONE the proper use of the tool, its limitations, and ethical issues that may arise from use of said tool.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-AI. Hell, my avatar is AI-generated.
Hoof-bump to a fellow AI-generated-avatar-haver. :)
Honestly, I don't really see how the scenario you're describing is different from the existing world we already live in. I'm very well read and technical, if I do say so myself, but I don't know how to change the oil in my car. I could probably figure it out easily enough but step one would be to google "how to change the oil in my car." That wouldn't be much different from 2025-me thinking "Overmind, how do I change the oil in my car?" To my neural interface implant, or whatever more advanced way of talking to AIs we've got by then. For anything more complicated than that I'd probably take it to the shop and have one of the small select group of car nerds who know how to do that sort of thing fix it for me.
Knowledge should be free and distributed, sure. But I don't think it's the right thing to force people to study it when they don't want to. There are far too many things necessary for a society like ours for everyone to know everything about it all.
I totally agree with you. 🙂