Just when you thought the modern world couldn’t get any more dystopian, a new artificial intelligence chatbot created by OpenAI Inc. is reportedly going to make all writers, including journalists, utterly redundant.
The company asked for public feedback on ChatGPT on Wednesday, and users were apparently surprised by its ability to make historical arguments, poems on cryptocurrency, suggesting it has the potential to replace everyone from playwrights to even scripting college essays, according to Bloomberg. Users shared examples of how the bot could easily pass college classes, and the results are so haunting I’m sure that Alex Jones is going to feel very proud of his prediction that global elites are trying to replace us with robots.
Bloomberg noted that OpenAI was co-founded by billionaire Twitter anarchist and all-around rebel Elon Musk with other investors some seven years ago, which feels somewhat like the start of every major sci-fi apocalypse movie. Musk left the company in 2018 in 2018 over disagreements with the overall direction of the company, but has since endorsed its potential.
AI is getting really good https://t.co/OwQgDi4wun
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 1, 2022
Seriously, you can’t write apocalyptic movies with a setup this obvious. An open-minded, pro-human foreign billionaire starts a company that could replace artists, writers, creators, and then leaves because of the direction of its development? Call me a conspiracy theorist, but that somewhat freaks me out. I probably won’t feel comfortable until I know why, specifically, Musk left.
While there are myriad risks associated with OpenAI’s potential, there are some upsides. Writing is part of the intelligent communication that led us to our current state of development. Can you honestly say that this version of society is that good? Perhaps it would be better if we all shut up a bit, and write from a place of passion, not power. (RELATED: Scream About ‘Ancient Apocalypse’ At Your Own Peril, Illiberal Idiots)
The other upside is that, since the only people who like journalists are other journalists, we might not have to deal with the partisan prevarication debilitating our sense of global optimism. Surely if we knew all of our digital communication came from a robot, we’d stop engaging in the macro, and maybe refocus on our immediate community.
Of course, there’s always the chance we end up with some incredible television too. Apparently, one young writer called Keaton Patti made a bot watch 1,000 hours of “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” in 2018. The script is the greatest thing I’ve ever read in my entire life.
I forced a bot to watch over 1,000 hours of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives and then asked it to write a Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives episode of its own. Here is the first page. pic.twitter.com/NvfODhiuUi
— Keaton Patti (@KeatonPatti) June 28, 2018
If OpenAI could create scripts like whatever bot Patti used, then perhaps all is not lost for creative writing after all? (But it probably is). I’m also not totally convinced this isn’t one giant Elon prank, which would be pretty damn funny if true.
Elon Musk and his team did not immediately respond for comment.