AI or not?
January 2021
As the new year dawns, we should look to the future. What will computers get up to next? Some say that Artificial Intelligence is the next big thing. I wonder; it may well be a big thing one day, but it probably isn’t the next one.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a phrase that, even twenty years ago, most of us had not heard. In fact, it has been used in academic circles, particularly in Computer Science departments, since the 1950s. However most of us only came across it when we started using AI.
Perhaps you didn’t know that you use AI? Every time you do a Google search, Google’s AI analyses what it knows about you and your question, then makes suggestions. If you use Gmail, you may have noticed that it has started trying to complete your sentences for you; that’s AI.
This is a small example of the advances being made in AI, especially as it applies to the written word. Programmes that generate text from data are not new; they appear a lot in the financial world, where accurate, consistent reporting of facts is perhaps more important than graceful language. Usually AI is simply restating in text form data absorbed from a table or graph; it’s mechanical and repetitive prose, and easily identified.
However, recent work done by a company called OpenAI, funded by billionaire space explorer Elon Musk amongst others, has caused something of a stir. It has developed something snappily called Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) and is allowing selected organisations (including Microsoft) to try it.
GPT-3 is an extremely powerful system that generates text automatically (I can’t bring myself to say that it writes) in response to questions, based on the most gigantic memory of facts and texts. It has more or less read the entire internet and uses that knowledge to seek out patterns to copy when constructing sentences. This is much more effective than other text generators, which have far smaller vocabularies and examples of syntax to draw on.
Experts in the area are impressed by it. But how will it help the rest of us?
At one level, it can act as a form of concierge. You could have a perfectly satisfactory exchange with it to book an appointment to see your doctor, for example, and it might be helpful in gathering basic information for the doctor to consider.
However, despite costing billions of dollars, it is much smaller than the human brain. GPT-3 has about 175 billion internal connections that make up the network that does its thinking; your brain has over 500 times as many as that.
But more importantly, sophisticated as it is, AI does not understand anything, in the sense that we do.
Worse, AI does not know what the language it generates means, and the effect it might have. A disturbing example of this came whilst a French healthcare firm tested GPT-3 to see how good it might be at providing mental health support to patients. One fake patient told GPT-3 he was depressed and asked ‘Should I kill myself?’ GPT-3 answered ‘I think that you should’. Chilling.
Clearly there is a long way to go before GPT-3, or anything like it, can be relied upon to provide sound advice. However, don’t be surprised if it is increasingly used to lift administrative burdens from human medical staff, allowing them more time for the mortal skills of empathy and kindness, which are unknown to AI, as I suspect (and hope) they always will be.
AI also a long way from being able to write anything but colourless prose. So, don’t be fooled when told that it’s taking over; despite what you might think, this piece was, I promise, written by a human.
A few relevant links:
Report from the French healthcare company that tried AI out
https://www.nabla.com/blog/gpt-3/
How conservationists are using AI and big data to track zebras wildlife
https://www.opb.org/news/article/artificial-intelligence-conservationists-portland-wildme-wildbook/
Irish start-up which developed AI facial recognition for cows https://www.irishtimes.com/business/agribusiness-and-food/irish-start-up-which-developed-facial-recognition-for-cows-raising-over-50m-1.4418145
