Artificial Intelligence applications are the currently most hyped new technology. People’s opinions range from fear to concern to anticipation to euphoria – depending on what they hope for or worry about.
So, to be able to form my own opinion, I decided to educate myself and play with A.I.
Here’s my take: A.I. is definitely very artificial, but there is no intelligence involved. Other than, maybe the intelligence of those people who developed it.
I used ChatGPT to generate text, articles, explanations, letters, educational material for myself. As long as you thoroughly fact-check the results, it may be an interesting way to help with writing simple texts faster. A skillful prompt engineer can probably generate some pretty useful material, but be aware that the A.I. behaves like a teenager: if it doesn’t find real facts, it just makes up stuff. Adult supervision is strongly advised.
I also used imagineme.ai to create a model of myself that I can now insert into images. The results from it are rarely as impressive as the one up top here, which may also be due to my lack of skills as a prompter. Some of the pictures the A.I. rendered were hilarious. Like a version of me with three arms, or a neck two feet long, or fingers that look like rubber tentacles. In one picture I wanted to paint myself as a shepherd, with my sheepdog laying next to me in the grass. What I got was a funny looking animal with a sheep’s body and a dog’s head.
At the current stage in its existance A.I. is sorely lacking anything like logical thinking, the ability to check its own findings, or basic math skills. It is nothing to worry about – yet. Except, maybe, that too many stupid people fall for some A.I. generated story, or image, or video.
