Yesterday I wrote that I would never use generative AI — ChatGPT or similar apps — to write what you read here. But how short-sighted that was.
Last night, just a few hours after writing that, I read about a lawyer’s case that was thrown out by the judge because several of the precedents cited were fictitious. It seems the lawyer had used ChatGPT to look for legal precedents to support his client’s case, and the AI had helpfully thrown in several fictitious cases.
The judge was understandably angry and the lawyer appropriately mortified. No word about how the client felt.
Perhaps the lawyer should have known better than to trust ChatGPT to do his research. But he is most certainly not alone in that. Students and who knows how many other people are already using generative AI to write their themes, essays, term papers, reports, and anything else requiring a lot of text and some research.
However, the lawyer’s mistake got me thinking. While I would never ask ChatGPT to write something important — certainly not anything as important as a lawyer’s brief — I would and often do ask Google to look up something for me. And who’s to say the sources it finds aren’t using AI to write their content? Are any search engines today smart enough to exclude AI-generated content from their results? Would we want and should we trust search results that include AI-generated content?
To some extent “AI” can be interpreted as “computer-based,” and computers have been in use for a very long time. But generative AI is a different breed of cat. It doesn’t just speed up things that humans could do otherwise. It distills its human input and from it generates its own original content.
Compound that with search engines that are themselves using AI to assist, boost, or otherwise “improve” their results for the user. How will those search engines know that the information they find is not partly or wholly AI-generated? How will the user know if search results from any search engine can be trusted as not fictitious, not AI-generated?
So in addition to the “fake news” and rumors already circulated by ignorant or ill-informed people, we can now add AI-generated information that may or may not be true.
That said, I should amend my promise to never use AI-generated text here and say I will never knowingly use AI-generated text here. I read, listen to, and quote many different sources and although I generally stick to the most reputable, who’s to say they haven’t inadvertently incorporated AI-generated information that is false or misleading?
I could be catastrophizing and if so, I’ll eventually snap out of it. But for now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a headache …
Thanks for sharing this. Anita
Sometimes I think. Sometimes I write. This is my writing space. Thanks for tolerating me.
Thanks for sharing your writing. Anita
The problem with AI is that it all relies on a “source of truth.” If that truth is accurate, then the results are good, but sadly, many AI systems including ChatGPT allow unfiltered information from the internet, which is know to have a lot of bad information.
Which of course leads us to the existential crisis – what is true? What is reality? Did I write this or did a computer extrapolate my response from all my blog posts.
ChatGPT works from its base of info — reading everything on the internet. And we all know how reliable that is or isn’t. Certainly gives one pause, doesn’t it?
a good point
Discomfitting at the very least.
How do you even THINK of these things, you horrible (but oh, so right !) woman ?!
Can ChatGPT hear, as well ?
If a tree falls ..
Well, when you live alone you have a lot of time to think, worry, ruminate, cogitate, and simply pass the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if ChatGPT takes into account any voices picked up by computer microphones. It might even note the sound of falling trees …
But I do, too (of course: one of the many, many things we share); yet I don’t manage my brain as well as you do. Once it was a thing of function: now it’s more of a means to finding new jumper and cardi patterns to crochet. Sighh ..
Well that’s more worthwhile than the video games I play.
Good observations. As a former journalist, and seeker of rational truth and reality, this unbridled plunge we are taking with AI scares the bejezus out of me.
I try to remain rational about it but it’s not easy. My son is an IT developer and he can talk me down a little bit, but at best I still find it extremely unnerving. It just seems like it was released with virtually no thought given to how it could be misused.
All good questions. This is scary.
I’ve no doubt there are malcontents and worse staying up late nights thinking of ways to misuse this technology.
…soooo, now i will only read nonfiction published before 2020 just to be on the safe side of don’t believe everything i read? I still shudder thinking back to papers i submitted (with good grades received) that included the “new, from the Internet” Wikipedia as a credible source. i feel sorry for kids trying to do their best reseach from now on.
Well, that’s a thought. But it will make it hard to stay current on the news. At least with tv you won’t be getting written news, but you won’t know the sources the “talking heads” have used.
Wow, wish I’d had the internet to help with my papers. I still had to rely on books at the library.