(OPINION) Artificial intelligence could one day replace human workers in four major industries, experts have claimed. In a new opinion piece for CNN, Peter Bergen says that for a while experts have speculated AI will replace humans in fields such as customer service, insurance underwriting, and manufacturing.
But now, Bergen has expressed concern that AI may also overtake writers. “For the past several days, I have been hearing about the AI chatbot ChatGPT,” Bergen writes. “Users of the tool claim to be able to write coherent essays and op-eds in seconds.”
“So, I signed up to give it a try and asked it to perform a task that I had hitherto believed required at least some level of skill. I asked ChatGPT to ‘Write an op-ed in the style of Peter Bergen.'” The journalist shared the AI-generated opinion piece and argued that while it was impressive, it did contain some factual errors.
Bergen attributed the mistakes to the fact that ChatGPT was created in 2021 and may not have knowledge of current events. He then asked the AI-powered tool a historical question about the role of women in the French Revolution. The answer, Bergen said, was not exactly like the work of leading historians but did “suggest a future in which college students will likely be able to submit long and complicated papers that are entirely generated by AI.”
“And then what does it mean to be educated at a liberal arts college? And why go to all the bother and expense?” Bergen asked. He continued: “So, I head into 2023 with a sobering realization. My career as a CNN op-ed writer, which began in earnest over a decade ago, may not exactly be over yet since AI-generated op-eds make factual errors – just as humans do, though those are typically caught during the fact-checking process.”
“Yet my writing career could still go the way of the grocery checkout jobs eliminated by automation.” He noted that Al tools will keep getting smarter, and telling apart AI-written op-eds from ‘real’ human ones will also get harder over time. “As a writer and professor, that makes for a dystopian future. (I promise this sentiment was not generated by AI),” Bergen concluded. (SOURCE)
