This UBCO prof says you don't need to be scared of AI yet

The advent of artificial intelligence programs like ChatGPT will transform the job market.

However, the much-publicized large language model technology - which can perform all sorts of detailed writing tasks - does not herald the rise of the machines.

So says Liane Gabora, a professor in the department of psychology at the University of British Columbia Okanagan.

Gabora describes herself as a cognitive scientist and she and her colleagues have been playing with, and pondering, what ChatGPT’s arrival will likely mean for academia and work as we know it.

“I’m not as scared as the worst predictions,” she told Kelowna10. “Some people are saying it’s ‘Ex Machina’ come true and the AI will take over all our jobs and this is the end,” she said, referring to the hit 2014 movie in which an android servant escapes their environment and assumes consciousness.

“I think it could even be a good thing in many ways,” she explained, noting it gives professors like her a chance to engage with students about the value of AI in the future workplace while ensuring quality instruction and testing in the classroom beyond the writing of essays.

AI can write about anything, but no A+ grades yet

ChatGPT, which is created by American research lab OpenAI, essentially follows any command, like writing essays on any given subject at any grade level. It accesses all knowledge and data on the internet, summarizes it, predicts how language flows and then spits out reasonable and largely understandable text…often in just a few seconds.

It has passed law, medical, and business exams, although admittedly not with flying colours, yet.

BuzzFeed has said it will use the program to write some content, raising concerns about the future of media jobs, while Microsoft, one of the big investors in ChatGPT, said it will invest billions more dollars at a time when it has announced thousands of layoffs.

But Gabora said currently, the technology offers ‘pretty bland and annoyingly repetitive’ writing that is formulaic and does not yet reflect a ‘sense of self’, even though she and her colleagues have played with the program as it tries to emulate and even impersonate writing style.

She asked it to write like herself and she figured it produced a C grade paper. It ‘learned’ phrases, style and verbal mannerisms of her colleagues, but to the trained eye the compositions prompted more laughter than applause for the standard of the writing.

“One thing about ChatGPT, it doesn’t ask clarifying questions,” Gabora said. “And a lot of the reason why real human conversation works is because we do this. Clarifying questions is what is necessary to make the conversation real and live and humanlike. We’re not there yet.”

Being more engaging and encouraging this sense of questioning will be the thrust for educators in the classroom as we learn to work alongside AI, according to Gabora.

“Focus on asking good questions rather than answers,” she explained. "A lot of what it’ll take to succeed in this new world with ChatGPT in it, is to know how to prompt it to get the information you want.”

Gabora added teachers will likely need to ensure classes are more improvisational and to advance discussion and further exploration about a topic.

As for the monitoring of student work, she said there should be more of a reliance on class testing than on take home essays and to use lockdown browsers for remote testing, because of the risk someone may use ChatGPT to do their work.

If there is any suspicion a student’s essay had been written by AI, that person could then be verbally asked about parts of the paper.

Future of jobs?

How will AI change the future of creative industries?

Some platforms have already been let loose in the spheres of music and art composition that have raised concerns.

Gabora figures it could indeed kill jobs to some extent, but there will always be a place for creative outputs that come from yourself.

"That comes from wrestling with something and in the process of engaging in that creative act, it shifts who you are. There’s something powerful in knowing the story behind a creative work.”

Ultimately, whether it’s professors, journalists or artists who fear redundancy as the wave of AI sweeps the globe, Gabora notes people have always moved with the technological times.

As an example, she said when electricity came along, streetlamp lighters lost their jobs but that ended up being a good thing and they found other employment.

“Humans are adaptive, we find ways of working around situations, we’re just going to have to do that now.”

Gabora has written an article, which was published in Psychology Today, detailing what direction would be needed to make AI an autonomous self.