Meeting my eventual replacement

It’s not every day that you meet the force that will ultimately replace you. But I familiarized myself with the impressive artificial intelligence known as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Since most of you will be unfamiliar with it (I hope), let me set the stage for you...

The free research preview model allows you to experiment with the model and test its capabilities. The ChatGPT model can be fine-tuned to answer questions in a conversational style, which can be used in chatbots or virtual assistants. Curious (but skeptical) me typed instructions to write “a blog about Fort Payne.”

After a second, Chat GPT started cranking out paragraph after paragraph of compelling copy about this area.

In paragraph number four, however, it got tripped up and mentioned a couple of things that are either so secretive as to elude even my awareness or to be completely made up out of thin air.

Whew... that was close!

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to automate certain tasks traditionally performed by writers and editors, such as fact-checking and simple copy-editing. However, I now feel more comfortable saying that it’s not likely that AI will completely replace writers and editors.

At least not this year.

Even though AI-based writing tools can generate simple text, it lacks the nuance and complexity of human writing. These tools might not be able to understand the intended tone and style, which is critical for good writing.

Editors and writers still play an important role in guiding the direction of content, providing context and making decisions about what to include and what to exclude. Only because space is limited and sometimes you just have to be out there talking to people to have any sense of what actually matters to them.

However, AI technology can most definitely assist writers and editors to improve our workflow and become more efficient, It’s not likely to replace us completely. Yet.

It’s more likely that AI will augment our work, helping us to be more productive, while we focus on tasks that require human creativity, interpretation and emotional intelligence.

The results generated by the ChatGPT model are based on the data it has been trained on, which may not always be accurate or up-to-date. It’s important to verify any information generated by the model, as it is not always reliable or trustworthy. The goal of the research preview is to allow someone like me to test its capabilities before committing to a paid plan.

At the very least, ChatGPT made for a fascinating exploration of where technology is taking us.