There’s been so much recent discussion on new generative AI technologies and ChatGPT. Are we all out of a job? Well ChatGPT is fantastic technology. It can probably write a better-constructed blog post than this one. But when we talk about these new “artificial intelligence” algorithms we need to do more to differentiate “knowledge” from “intelligence“.
ChatGPT and other generative AI are a fantastic way to summarise and re-package human knowledge – whether that’s providing textual responses to questions or re-packaging art to generate new creations. What they’re not doing is anything that’s actually intelligent – we get lost in the smoke and mirrors and just think they are.
In the 90’s everyone thought that Deep Blue was a marvel – a computer that was intelligent enough to play chess. It wasn’t, it was just capable of incredibly fast, for the time, computation and search.
ChatGPT is the next generation of technology and algorithms, and a huge leap forward from the chess game on my iPhone that still beats me! But it’s not intelligent! It just reads faster, remembers more, and collates better than any of us can.
Worth considering though is that these technologies will change the way we work.
In the future, should you be in the knowledge economy or the intelligence business?
The knowledge economy just provides these systems with more data to learn against and improve. If you drive an autonomous car, you’re just providing the car with more data that it can train against and get better at being autonomous. If you contribute to or correct a Wikipedia article or write a blog post (that has any real value) then the treasury of information that you are creating will make ChatGPT and other AI algorithms even better.
Where do we still win? Cognitive abilities and intelligence such as problem-solving, critical thinking, and creativity.
I asked ChatGPT whether in the future it will be better to have a job that creates knowledge or requires intelligence. Its answer was very diplomatic, although I thought it missed the point a bit!
