The Importance of Being Human
Like an approaching train, tools like chatGPT seem to be barreling towards our lives. We hear the far-off whistle and the chug of the engine, and (like waiting for a train at the station) we feel both nervous and excited.
Most don’t realize that all chatGPT does is an elaborate synthesis of what humans already created—and often, it’s off in subtle (or glaring) ways that sound convincing but are wrong. In other words, chatGPT is utterly dependent on human creation and the limits of human-created algorithms.
So ultimately, someone needs to create the information that chatGPT consumes; otherwise, it will eventually become an echo chamber of itself, a self-referential machine without any new information, new thoughts, new discoveries.
I believe that ‘someone’ will need to be humans.
Not humans sitting in a content farm typing in ‘top 10’ lists and superficial information in a Wikipedia-like fashion, but curious, intelligent humans who are thinking, researching, debating, exploring. Pushing the limits of human knowledge and understanding, and challenging what we already (think) we know.
The discoveries and original thought that arises from those activities can never be simulated. Sure, AI will become a partner of humans and a consumer of the resulting human creations, but the key element in all of this will be…human.
The trick will be to remain human. And right now, AI tools are causing us to look at ourselves and reflect on just what being ‘human’ means.