Watching the discussion about ChatGPT reminds me of the early days of Google. I’m thinking back to when it was under the Stanford domain and opinions of it since.
The criticism of ChatGPT is sounding pretty familiar… The results can be dubious and questionable. You need to know enough to be able to vet the results. Sometimes the answers are misleading or downright wrong.
These all sound like things we’ve had to manage with Google, Wikipedia, Stackoverflow. Sources of useful information that have become so ubiquitous that they’ve become memes and verbs and parts of our daily life.
The warnings are good to keep in mind, but they so often come across as criticisms. Don’t let them quench our use of the technology, but guide and inform how we use this tool.
The Google search engine, Wikipedia as one among many sources, Stackoverflow as a guide… These have all become incredibly useful tools in our daily lives. Which makes me curious how ChatGPT will be improving our lives in a decade, when used thoughtfully. I think it’s going to be interesting times. But isn’t that a curse?