Artificial Intelligence, the darling of master nerds, coding maestros and computer virtuosos, is shined up as an indispensible part of life as we scroll it. Tech spinners, today’s rendition of the door-to-door salesman, are packing apps and bots that do it all. Fuller Brush, meet OpenAI.
We’ve been introduced:
‒ Those “can we chat?” bubbles that spring up during a search of online merchandise;
‒ The pop-up words or phrases anticipating text we might need ‒ or not ‒ while tapping a keypad;
‒ The phone robot fixed with a steadfast menu, options that sidestep a caller’s particular inquiry. If the caller persists, a robot (“bot”) is likely to provide a person (Real Intelligence), the reason for the call to begin with.
OpenAI recently released an updated ChatGPT chatbot named GPT4-o. The company believes this bot will better understand a caller’s instructions. It also performs on video. “The updated voice can mimic a wider range of human emotions, and allows the user to interrupt… with fewer delays…” And so on.
The idea is to shrink the difference between human and machine until human peters out and no one is sure who or what is running the show ‒ shopping inquiries, medical appointments, weather alerts, bank accounts, elections.
Defenders of scientific advancement claim that this is progress. This may be. A lot of people are alarmed at the decay of our system, how we govern, how we pursue our lives. We need Real Intelligence, not the artificial brand. If chatty robots can be programmed to think for us they can be taught to worry for us and come up with some answers.
