Let me tell you a story about how I evolved from a perspective I was dead set was the right way to do it and the only way it can be done. What I learned from it and why I am focusing on the question I asked, information received rather than the assumption I make of the situation.
I’m a hero in the United States for fighting for the rights of LGBTQ people but a villain in my home country for doing the same thing.
Imagine how humans from two different cultures view the same thing. According to the online Dictionary the word Evolve comes from the Latin word evolvere, "to unroll" — the perfect image to keep in mind when thinking of this verb. When something is unrolling or unraveling, it is doing so gradually, not all at once. Evolve describes a development that is taking its time to reach its final destination. Think change with a speed limit.
We're amid a major cultural shift, and at the center of this calamitic change is Artificial intelligence A.I. You might have heard of ChatGPT the machine learning language model, and Bard, her rival from google. This has created fear on the internet, misinformation, and the narrative of A.I. displacing us all soon. Here we go again!
Many people say they want to change, and we say our politicians need to change, but we fear change when it appears to threaten us and most especially our livelihood “Our way of doing things.” Invariably we want some things to remain constant i.e., our job, our relationships, and other personal life changes expect when we voluntarily leave them.
Change can be good or bad depending on when, where or who it happened to!
In the good old days, even before I was born, the office typewriter was replaced by a computer. The person who types for the office on a typewriter could be displaced from his or her work, a source of their living erased. Which has financial and economic sentiment tied to it, but my argument is that the person would not have been displaced, if they had to upskill from typing on a typewriter to type on a computer, the key words here are learning and upskilling.
The person who lost their job was not the typewriter manufacturer either, because they can join a new manufacturer producing a computer. There is a case for the ease a computer provides, less paper consumption, and room to make more mistakes because the computer has an ever-green space to type, store, retrieve, and rewrite.
So, therefore the argument of A.I. Chat GPT replacing humans. In my opinion, I believe it’s impossible for a machine to replace humans because the machine needs human intelligence to improve its model. Just like a pencil for artists and a typewriter for writers were valuable in the past, A.I. has become a tool in the present for recommending what music we listen to and what videos to see on social media such as YouTube.
Humans must gain more experience for the model to have things to use. For example, ChatGPT cannot book a flight to India, land on the ground, and have a conversation with someone in the market on the new style of hats for cowboys being developed by India for the future of American cowboys. You have to say to it write or paint in a personal style, it’s not inventing the style.
Evolving perspectives refer to the changes and shifts in the way people view and understand a particular issue, concept, or phenomenon over time. It highlights the idea that perspectives are not fixed and can change as new information, experiences, and understanding are gained. In essence, evolving perspectives reflect the growth and development of an individual's or a society's beliefs, values, and attitudes.
When I was younger people traveled outside of Nigeria and couldn’t return for their parent funeral, I called them wayward for doing so. In 2021, I was looking at that same person in the mirror. “Shifting perspective.” I lost my father in 2021 and I couldn’t return home to see him.
Evolving perspectives refer to the changes in people's viewpoints and understandings over time, as they gain new information, have new experiences, and come to new insights and realizations. If we can embrace these new experiences and see them as an opportunity, we would have a less catastrophic reaction to these changes.
The typewriter lady could have taken a few minutes a day to learn about the computer rather than wait for a day when her box drops a brand-new computer on her desk. We used libraries for research then google arrived. We started using the search engine on google for research and now chat GPT. Many people use Alexa, and Siri voice prompts which are also artificial intelligence voice prompts.
So, where do we go from here? Scared, no. We can use this as a research tool for learning and not cheating or plagiarism. What is essential in this conversation of ChatGPT is the erosion of the work of others who took the time in putting together the work in the first place. How are they referenced, how is their work protected, and whose intelligence is being used to make profits?
“With change we learn to grow.”