Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1492791
5.12.19 12 OPINION 16.2.2023 Mark Camilleri Gambin Mark Camilleri Gambin is technical director at Preeo Software and founder of Talexio. He loves to code, solve problems, read books, paint and computer gaming Authenticity in the face of AI: adapting to disruption T he AI revolution that we've been simultaneously anxious and ex- cited about for around the last 30 years may finally be here. e availability of ChatGPT is starting to change things, and while some fellow techies are eager to remind us that this is 'nothing new', the end result brought about by its wide- spread availability does feel revolutionary. As with all great technological leaps, it has the potential to bring with it huge disruptions. Faced with this new reality, we must either adapt or suffer an early expiration. is is a case of history re- peating itself; just like our recent an- cestors had to adapt with the advent of sewing machines, the printing press and computers. For those that may not have heard yet, here's a quick update. A computer pro- gram called ChatGPT is able to behave very much like a human being would over an instant messaging conversation - think of having a whatsapp chat with a robot. You can send it a message and it will reply in a conversational manner. It is not "scripted" and it is capable of com- ing up with new and original answers to your questions on-the-fly. It has been trained on a vast amount of knowledge and can be used to answer just about any question. Like humans, it might not al- ways have the right answer, but for the most part it gives very detailed and valid answers. It can be used by anyone, right now, simply by visiting a website and starting a conversation with it. Unless you consider the automat- ic correction of spelling mistakes as a non-human intervention, this article is 100% human generated, but the next one you read may very well not be. If you are a teacher, the next home assign- ment you correct may very well have been produced using the help of Arti- ficial Intelligence - and no one can real- istically expect you to realise. e pres- entation that a candidate brings to an interview may be completely attributed to the same AI bot. e next song you hear may have had its lyrics beautifully written by a robot. And it doesn't stop with text; AI is now also getting very good at creating Art. Nothing is out of reach. It is easy to see these disruptions as the 'beginning of the end' - a slippery slope of educational degradation from which society can never recover. Science fic- tion literature has prepared us for such an end at the hands of intelligent ma- chines; a world in which humans have made themselves obsolete. is form of Apocalyptic thinking, which has ever been present in the story of humanity, now finds new fertile grounds. As a technophile, I am mildly con- cerned but mostly excited by this long new stretch on our ever expanding ho- rizon. I think artificial intelligence will set a "baseline quality" for all content. And that's a good thing. A knee-jerk re- action could be to try and block access or restrict its use only to specific groups of people - I think such an approach would yield undesirable inequalities, and as history has proven time and time again, is doomed to fail. However hard you try to hit the brakes on progress, technology will inevitably keep propel- ling us forward. As we try to navigate this new reali- ty, it is probably a good idea to thread carefully and build some guardrails around artificial intelligence. Unfortu- nately, people will always find ways to break those rules - as happened recently with the ChatGPT 'jailbreak'. Ultimately attempts to control the use of AI may prove to be futile and simply delay the inevitable. I believe that AI needs to remain with- in everyone's reach - restricting availa- bility only to the people who can afford it is a recipe for disaster. We will need to democratise AI and its use. Just like the calculator allows anyone to find the result to a mathematical question, word processors improved everyone's ability to auto-correct spelling mistakes, and Google allows anyone to find the an- swer to any question, Artificial Intelli- gence gives us all the ability to raise the bar of our starting point with all forms of content. We are now close to a future where we can each have our own AI assistant; a virtual companion that helps us bounce off our ideas, assist us in considering the pros and cons of any single decision and ultimately enable us to make better contributions. Yes, some of us will get lazier, just like we got lazier when we no longer needed to visit the library to do any research. Ironically, history shows us that every technological advancement has always brought about increased productivity, rather than reduced it. Instead of set- tling with the "good-enough" work pro- duced by AI in our stead - most people will find creative ways to improve their abilities and outcomes thanks to this technology. You will probably spend less time getting your ideas out of your head and onto a document, and with some newly found free-time you will be able to do more, do better or simply to do something different. e possibilities are endless, even in fields where we may have the most con- cerns. ink of education - as a teacher you could now use AI to create a com- pletely new mode of learning; what if your students could have a chat with Sir Isaac Newton at this very moment and ask a virtual version of the man all about his achievements - rather than read it in a book? is is possible, right now - just go ahead and ask ChatGPT to roleplay into whomever you'd like it to be. My attempt at this proved to be quite enter- taining and insightful. Am I being too optimistic in thinking that students actually want to learn stuff and that people will want to do more with their time? Maybe so, but it will only take a few people to push the en- velope and the others will simply need to follow or risk lagging behind. In the age of AI generated content, the added value you bring with your authenticity will be a key advantage. As with every generation, it falls upon us to inspire the next generation to re- main hungry for knowledge. e role of the educator will no longer focus on ranking students and grading them based on the output of their work. In- stead we can finally move on to inspiring and fostering a sense of wonder. Instill- ing strong positive values, including the value of being authentic, is necessary to remind people to take pride in their own work, to not surrender their ability to think and to choose to spend a good portion of their time thinking, ideating and expanding our understanding of the natural world. Educational programmes must now focus on refining critical and analyti- cal skills. All this can now be achieved more than ever as we discover new tools which so abruptly seem to have given us all a new array of creative superpowers. Like it or hate it, the disruption is well underway. How fast can we adapt?