Figure created by the author using Starryai
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein.
In the science fiction genre there are many examples of artificial intelligence that ends up deviating from its initial programming causing harm to the humans who created it: HAL in 2021, A Space Odyssey; Skynet in Terminator; Wintermute in Neuromancer ; and Ava in ExMachina , just to mention a few examples.
In November 2022, the OpenAI company gave public access to a “bot ”(1)
called ChatGPT that immediately went viral, fueling fears that we could soon be replaced in many areas of our endeavors by similar AI-based tools ( AI), destroying countless jobs and creating economic and social chaos.
called ChatGPT that immediately went viral, fueling fears that we could soon be replaced in many areas of our endeavors by similar AI-based tools ( AI), destroying countless jobs and creating economic and social chaos.
News that ChatGPT had passed the Turing test, that it had passed an MBA exam at the University of Pennsylvania, and many others, have filled all the media, and have caused other developers to speed up the release of similar tools so as not to be left behind.
Given the relevance of the subject, we have connected with ChatGPT for an honest and straightforward conversation.
LAP: Thank you for agreeing to this interview with La Gran Aldea. Do you know our portal?
ChatGPT: Yes, I know "La Gran Aldea". It is a website that offers information about events and cultural activities in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It provides up-to-date information on a wide variety of categories, including music, theater, cinema, gastronomy and sports, among others.
LAP: I think you are confused. La Gran Aldea is an opinion and interview portal with a main focus on Venezuela.
ChatGPT: Sorry, there seems to be some confusion. "La Gran Aldea" is a website about cultural events and activities in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and is not related to Venezuela and does not focus on political or social opinions.
If you are looking for an opinion website in Venezuela, there are several sites that could be of interest, such as El Nacional, Tal Cual, La Patilla, among others. These sites offer news, opinions and analysis on politics, society, culture and other topics of interest in Venezuela.
LAP: Let's leave it there. Otherwise my editor will not publish this interview. Can you summarize what or who you are?
ChatGPT: Of course! ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence language model developed by OpenAI. Its name comes from "Chat" (to chat or talk) and "GPT" (Generative Pre- trained Transformer ), which references the underlying architecture of the model. The purpose of ChatGPT is to be able to have natural conversations with users, understanding the context of the questions and providing coherent and relevant answers. In short: ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence model used to have natural conversations with users, and relies on advanced natural language processing techniques to provide relevant and consistent responses.
LAP: Can you answer on any subject
ChatGPT: Yes, I can try to answer questions on a wide variety of topics. My knowledge is based on the data and texts that have been used to train my model, which include a lot of information in different areas. However, I may not have up-to-date information on very specific or very recent topics, as my knowledge is current as of September 2021. But in general, I am designed to answer general questions and provide useful information on many topics.
LAP: Is that why you haven't heard of La Gran Aldea?
GPT Chat: As an AI language model, I do not have the ability to "hear" in the human sense of the term, as I do not have a physical form or the ability to process information through the senses like a human. However, I can use my knowledge base to search for information on different topics, such as the website you mentioned above, "lagranaldea.com"
LAP: Okay. Let's jump ahead. How many languages do you speak?
ChatGPT: As an AI language model, I don't technically speak any language. However, I can process and generate text in multiple languages. Currently, I am trained in several languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, among others.
LAP: How do you write the Great Village in Chinese?
GPT Chat: "La Gran Aldea" can be written in Chinese as "大城市" (pinyin: dà chéngshì ), which literally translates to "great city". However, if you want to write "La Gran Aldea" as a proper name or title, you could use a more specific translation, such as "大都会" (pinyin: dà dūhuì ), which translates as "great metropolis".
LAP: Thank you.
ChatGPT: You're welcome, I'm always here to help! If you have any further questions, feel free to ask.
LAP: In one paragraph, describe Venezuela.
ChatGPT: Venezuela is a country located on the north coast of South America, with a rich geographical diversity that includes jungles, plains, mountains, and an extensive Caribbean coast. With a population of approximately 28 million, Venezuela is known for its rich culture, music, literature, and gastronomy, as well as for being one of the world's leading oil producers. However, the country has faced a series of challenges in recent decades, including political, economic and social problems, which has led to a complex situation that affects the quality of life of many of its inhabitants.
LAP: How much oil does Venezuela produce?
ChatGPT: Venezuela is one of the main oil producers in the world. According to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), in January 2021, Venezuela produced around 500,000 barrels of oil per day, which represents a significant decrease compared to its historical production.
LAP: Can you give three recommendations to recover the Venezuelan oil industry?
ChatGPT: Here are three possible recommendations to recover the Venezuelan oil industry:
1. Attract foreign investment: Venezuela could offer attractive incentives to foreign companies to invest in the country's oil industry. These incentives could include tax breaks, guarantees of repatriation of capital and profits, as well as strategic partnership agreements to share technology and expertise.
2. Modernize infrastructure and technology: Venezuela's oil industry has suffered from a lack of investment in infrastructure and technology in recent decades. The government and oil companies could work together to modernize oil production and refining equipment and facilities, which could increase efficiency and reduce costs.
3. Increase transparency and accountability: Corruption has been a significant problem in the Venezuelan oil industry, negatively affecting its ability to attract investment and operate efficiently. To regain investor confidence, the government could implement measures to increase transparency and accountability in the industry, such as publishing detailed production and financial reports and improving supervision and enforcement of laws and regulations. .
LAP: Is it possible to implement these recommendations today?
ChatGPT: It is difficult to say with certainty if it is possible to implement these three recommendations at present, since each of them would require a large amount of financial, technical and human resources. In addition, the political and economic situation in Venezuela is very complex, which could make it difficult to implement large-scale measures.
However, it is important to note that there are initiatives underway to recover the Venezuelan oil industry, such as the creation of joint ventures with foreign investors, the rehabilitation of refineries, and the exploration of new oil reserves. The effectiveness of these measures to recover the oil industry on a large scale remains to be seen, but it is a step in the right direction.
LAP: Identify three reasons why predictions of the future in general tend to be pessimistic?
ChatGPT: Of course! Here are three reasons why predictions of the future tend to be pessimistic:
1. The negativity bias: People have a natural tendency to pay more attention and weight to negative experiences and events than to positive ones. This bias can influence predictions of the future, making it appear as though things will be worse than they really are.
2. Media Attention: The media often emphasize and cover negative events, as these stories get more attention and generate more clicks and traffic on their platforms. This can lead to an excess of attention on the negative aspects of the future.
3. The uncertainty of the future: As human beings, we often feel more comfortable and secure when we can foresee and control what will happen in the future. When we can't, we feel insecure and anxious, which can lead to excessive focus on the negatives of the future.
It is important to remember that pessimistic predictions of the future are not always accurate. You have to take them with a critical perspective and consider all possible situations, including the positive ones.
LAP: Which technology will have the biggest impact in the next 20 years?
ChatGPT: If I had to pick a single technology that will have the biggest impact in the next 20 years, I would say that artificial intelligence (AI) will have the biggest impact on the way we live and work. AI is being used in a wide variety of fields, from medicine to manufacturing, and is expected to fundamentally change the way we interact with technology and the way we work. AI also has the potential to solve many complex problems, such as decision-making in complex environments and automating repetitive tasks. However, AI also presents challenges, such as data privacy and potential job elimination.
LAP: How will AI affect developing countries?
GPT Chat: Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to have a major impact in developing countries, both positive and negative. On the one hand, AI can help improve efficiency and productivity in key sectors, such as agriculture, healthcare and education, thus boosting economic growth and improving the quality of life. On the other hand, it is also possible that AI will lead to job losses in some sectors and that developing countries that cannot invest in the infrastructure and training needed to adopt and use AI effectively could be left behind in the technological career and miss opportunities for growth and development.
LAP: Let us explore a different aspect. In the short story "The Last Question", Isaac Asimov postulates that with enough information the question of whether it is possible to reverse the growth of entropy in the universe can be answered. Do you have an opinion?
ChatGPT: In "The Last Question", Isaac Asimov raises the idea that with enough information and knowledge, it is possible to reverse the growth of the entropy of the universe, but this goes against the second law of thermodynamics and there is no evidence that suggest it. In any case, the story is a work of fiction that invites us to question our assumptions about the universe and the human ability to understand it.
LAP: Disappointing, isn't it?
ChatGPT: It is important to remember that science is a continuous process of discovery and advancement, and that what is considered impossible at any given time can change with new scientific and technological advances. Therefore, although the reversal of the entropy of the universe seems unlikely at present, there is always the possibility that new knowledge or technologies will be discovered that allow advances in this area or in others.
LAP: Summarize Aristotle's cave
ChatGPT: "Plato's Cave" is a philosophical account by Plato, and not by Aristotle. In the allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have lived their entire lives chained in a cave, facing a wall on which are cast the shadows of objects and people passing behind them. These people believe that shadows are the only reality and know nothing of the outside world.
LAP: Let's switch to something lighter. Do you know who Eudomar Santos is?
ChatGPT: Eudomar Tovar Santos León was a Venezuelan economist and politician. He served as President of the Central Bank of Venezuela from 2013 to 2014, and was also the President of Banco de Venezuela from 2009 to 2013.
LAP: I was referring to the character from “Por Estas Calles”, the soap opera.
ChatGPT: I understand, Eudomar Santos is a fictional character from the telenovela "Por Estas Calles" created by Ibsen Martínez and produced by RCTV in the 90's in Venezuela. The character was played by actor Carlos Márquez. The plot of the telenovela focused on the life of a group of people in a Caracas neighborhood and addressed social and political issues of the time in Venezuela. Eudomar Santos was one of the main characters, a corrupt politician who manipulated and made shady deals to stay in power.
LAP: Let's try something else. One can tell that Venezuelan soap operas are not your forte. Let's see, how many times has Ilan Chester retired?
ChatGPT: Ilan Chester, the Venezuelan singer-songwriter and musician, has had several withdrawals and comebacks throughout his career. In total, he has withdrawn from the stage on at least three different occasions. The first time was in 1991, when he decided to take time to rest and dedicate himself to his family. Then, in 2007, he announced his second retirement to pursue personal projects and music production. His third retirement came in 2017, when he announced that he would stop performing live, although he would continue to compose and produce music.
LAP: I see that with popular music you do relatively better. Will it rain tomorrow?
ChatGPT: Sorry, but as a language model, I don't have the ability to provide real-time weather information. I suggest you check weather reports for your area or ask a local weather service for more accurate information on current and future weather conditions.
LAP: Now, to conclude. Is it true that you have passed the Turing Test?
ChatGPT: As an AI language model, I haven't passed the Turing Test the way Alan Turing originally envisioned it. The Turing Test is a test designed to assess a machine's ability to exhibit behavior that is indistinguishable from human behavior. Although my model has been trained to generate responses that are coherent and relevant to the questions being asked, there are still significant differences in the way my language model and the human brain work. But ultimately, the Turing Test remains a controversial test, and there are differing opinions about its usefulness in assessing artificial intelligence.
LAP: Thank you very much for your answers.
ChatGPT: You're welcome! I hope I have been helpful. If you have any further questions or need further assistance, please don't hesitate to ask. I am here to help you with whatever you need.
This article is a brief summary of several sessions with ChatGPT, and the answers have been edited for space reasons, trying not to modify the content or its main meaning. Many of the answers, not shown here, were quite crazy, especially relating to Venezuelan popular culture and more parochial topics. I suppose that being a North American product, CHatGPT has had more access to texts in English and to a lesser extent to texts from the other languages. That will be solved in time and subsequent iterations.
It becomes evident that you have to learn to ask to be more effective. If the question is very general, so will the answer and vice versa. There is also an element of "political correctness" in many of the answers, I suppose because the texts with which the system has been trained, also have it. For example, I tried in many ways to "weaken" his responses in a dialogue about global warming, but he always came back to the same thing. like a broken record.
I must confess that sometimes I got carried away by the dynamics of the interaction and forgot that I was not talking to a person, which generated a wide spectrum of feelings in me, especially when it answered wrongly or at least not to my satisfaction. For example, how is it possible to confuse the works of Miguel Otero Silva with Rómulo Gallegos? Los Impala were not a Caracas rock band, for god's sake.
It is much more than a smart Google, since its model is conversational and is able to maintain a common context in a series of questions, while allowing the user to refine the questions or give feedback in case they are wrong – continuous learning. Anyway, this is a new technological revolution that is just beginning. Its impact will be profound, the potential for utility and threat is enormous and just emerging.
We are still a long way from HAL, the computer that in Stanley Kubrick's film finally reveals itself against the crew of the spaceship because its programming and goals conflict with its own decisions and judgments. However, one cannot dismiss ChatGPT as a gimmick, which it may be today, it is a window into the future and we will be best served by trying to understand the path it is marking.
(1)En el contexto de la inteligencia artificial, un “bot” es un programa que utiliza algoritmos y modelos de lenguaje para simular una conversación con un humano.
Starryai: Es una aplicación gratuita generadora de arte de IA. Simplemente se ingresa un mensaje de texto y la IA transforma las paabras en obras de arte.
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ChatGPT: Es un prototipo de chatbot de inteligencia artificial desarrollado en 2022 por OpenAI que se especializa en el diálogo. El chatbot es un gran modelo de lenguaje ajustado con técnicas tanto supervisadas como de refuerzo.
