So. Many. Thoughts! My wife is a media specialist at an elementary school. She is on the front line of teaching literacy and helping kids spot the fakes. Of course, this is Florida, where we can't even acknowledge truth that makes us "uncomfortable." While we fight to preserve the truth, the liars will use AI to "flood the zone" like Steve Bannon, but at a greater scale. Frightening stuff! So your call to churches and pastors to address such challenges is spot on. I fear that this going to be too big a task for even the most media-savvy theologians and parishioners. I do not fear change as much as many folks, especially frequent church flyers. BUT. I return to a disturbing conviction I have that the acceleration of technological change has already eclipsed human ability to adapt. If we, as the human species, cannot agree to put the brakes on some of this, our transformation into something not 100% human is coming sooner rather than later--and that presumes we can survive our own worst impulses. Oof--sorry to be so gloomy. At least you have reminded us of the importance of hope!
Yes, your comment brings to mind (and I've probably said this to you before) the discourse that cropped up when the stories came out about Instagram harming teen girls. People were like "well parents needs to exercise discretion and discernment" and I'm like "do you GET these are billion-dollar companies we're up against??" Come on.
And yet, what's the alternative? At least until we can build up collective will to take on the system. Great comments, Jody.
I'm always fascinated by new tech breakthroughs (the World Wide Web, HTML, Google search, social media, etc.) and I tend to jump right in with dabbling as soon as things break. I'm doing the same with ChatGPT and Bing and Lex.page. I do a lot of business writing in my job that can become extremely repetitive. I find these bots very helpful at changing up how I say things, doing outlines, overcoming writer's block, or just helping my brain clarify what I want to say. So far, it's too bland and machine-like, as you say. to produce usable content on its known. I AM concerned though on how all of this could affect students. If I had had ChatGPT in grad school theology and scripture classes, the temptation to take shortcuts would have been very, very strong! Would I have painstakingly worked through the tense, mood, voice, gender, number, or case of every word in a Greek sentence when I could have just asked a bot to parse the first three verses of the second chapter of Mark and had the answer in ten seconds? Would I have learned anything by adopting the latter method? So like you, I have mixed feelings. I'm a huge fan of the tech-run-amok movies like iRobot and Surrogates and Oblivion. But I'm also so very interested in tech breakthroughs!
Another powerful article about this (ugly link because it's not paywalled): https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/02/opinion/ai-tech-climate-change.html?unlocked_article_code=4QDJ0KYxW1a2gqDCUR7cuzHG4oQMS6srgXRu8HITq_-Yk835c3dGraxOgRU34nkSrBo0Yl0uk3CY2w7q__EjWheU3E6VahtenFqWmoPBDBFXbg3jsh6xVlErXPJ7n3xVyJExXkxW7kv0XwcoUlUaTImVi9WgIexopkAO4O0dRhlZ9S1BuO28QHjHnsGfLM-gPFPxSaVVExWjOegzLNj2o2xpac8Ff6dvI8VRRktXwr3N7T0GS7Xdq9xZ367oL-R0h47Fj-utm6r2GIVYZwMDqSmKVVIw_iYXuXljQHXv6twsf40BKjfwhsVa1RdRysrYVW_6HGa0OGZWfF9V7ByEWg&smid=url-share
So. Many. Thoughts! My wife is a media specialist at an elementary school. She is on the front line of teaching literacy and helping kids spot the fakes. Of course, this is Florida, where we can't even acknowledge truth that makes us "uncomfortable." While we fight to preserve the truth, the liars will use AI to "flood the zone" like Steve Bannon, but at a greater scale. Frightening stuff! So your call to churches and pastors to address such challenges is spot on. I fear that this going to be too big a task for even the most media-savvy theologians and parishioners. I do not fear change as much as many folks, especially frequent church flyers. BUT. I return to a disturbing conviction I have that the acceleration of technological change has already eclipsed human ability to adapt. If we, as the human species, cannot agree to put the brakes on some of this, our transformation into something not 100% human is coming sooner rather than later--and that presumes we can survive our own worst impulses. Oof--sorry to be so gloomy. At least you have reminded us of the importance of hope!
Yes, your comment brings to mind (and I've probably said this to you before) the discourse that cropped up when the stories came out about Instagram harming teen girls. People were like "well parents needs to exercise discretion and discernment" and I'm like "do you GET these are billion-dollar companies we're up against??" Come on.
And yet, what's the alternative? At least until we can build up collective will to take on the system. Great comments, Jody.
I'm always fascinated by new tech breakthroughs (the World Wide Web, HTML, Google search, social media, etc.) and I tend to jump right in with dabbling as soon as things break. I'm doing the same with ChatGPT and Bing and Lex.page. I do a lot of business writing in my job that can become extremely repetitive. I find these bots very helpful at changing up how I say things, doing outlines, overcoming writer's block, or just helping my brain clarify what I want to say. So far, it's too bland and machine-like, as you say. to produce usable content on its known. I AM concerned though on how all of this could affect students. If I had had ChatGPT in grad school theology and scripture classes, the temptation to take shortcuts would have been very, very strong! Would I have painstakingly worked through the tense, mood, voice, gender, number, or case of every word in a Greek sentence when I could have just asked a bot to parse the first three verses of the second chapter of Mark and had the answer in ten seconds? Would I have learned anything by adopting the latter method? So like you, I have mixed feelings. I'm a huge fan of the tech-run-amok movies like iRobot and Surrogates and Oblivion. But I'm also so very interested in tech breakthroughs!
I've heard ChatGPT can be great for generating first drafts. I haven't tried that yet but would love to give it a go. Thanks for this!