I remember growing up and being warned of the dangers of relying on technology — math teachers would constantly remind my classmates and me to not rely on a calculator, as I wouldn’t have one in my pocket all the time later in life. I remember my responding flippancy to this statement as well, which proved to be correct; now, many years later, I have not only a calculator in my pocket but an essayist, code debugger, lyricist, poet, and website builder as well. 

When OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT was released, it hit Lakeside hard. Students in sophomore history began to wonder if their in-class essay assignment would be handwritten to prevent AI use, usual talk in ceramics class was replaced by discussions of a dystopian future, and in Dr. Brooks’ bioethics class, students debated the ethics of AI. But is ChatGPT a stark wakeup call about artificial intelligence rivaling humanity or about the nature of humanity itself? 

The use of AI in writing can greatly increase the productivity of businesses in a variety of industries. By utilizing AI’s ability to quickly and accurately generate written content, businesses can save time and resources, allowing them to focus on other important tasks. This is particularly beneficial for industries such as marketing and advertising, consulting and finance, where high-quality written materials are essential for communicating with clients and stakeholders. Additionally, AI can also be useful for industries such as journalism and publishing, where it can help generate articles and other written content with speed and accuracy. Overall, the use of AI in writing will greatly benefit businesses by allowing them to produce more written materials in less time.

AI, specifically ChatGPT, also wrote that previous paragraph. It passed a plagiarism checker with an originality grade of 100%.

What’s even more terrifying than the capabilities of ChatGPT is its impact. We are now forced to wrestle with not only the capabilities of AI but with those of the individual – if tasks that could only previously be done by highly trained professionals can now be accomplished in seconds by a computer, what does that mean? Which jobs are valuable now, if many can be easily replicated with cheap and widely accessible AI? Would we prefer to have technology solve future problems or do we, as humans, want to continue to do so? For the most part, we don’t exactly know. 

But at the end of the day, AI is not our greatest enemy. AI itself is not going out and changing the workforce, or replacing jobs; it is only the means to do so. We are the puppet-masters pulling the strings, with the potential to manipulate AI’s capabilities for cheaper labor and greater profit. After all, what created AI and ChatGPT in the first place if not the human need for competition and the desire for progression, no matter the cost? And when society finally nears the portrayal in dystopian novels where AI has become more prevalent than humans, we cannot blame AI. We can only blame ourselves. After all, it is not nature that determines the paths in the dirt, but the footsteps of the travelers who wander through it, in search of something greater than themselves.