SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a rapidly developing tool that has many strengths and weaknesses, with generative AI like ChatGPT becoming wildly popular since becoming publicly available.
ChatGPT responds to prompts from users on topics from medical diagnosis to legal advice to essay prompts. Its many uses have raised concerns from teachers for its potential for cheating, but visiting professor Carrie Riby says the use of the new technology can be easy to detect.
“It still has problems with arithmetic,” Riby said. “If you ask it ‘if you have ten pepole, how many toes do you have?’ It doesn’t always understand how to take that problem and turn it into an answer.”
Despite the limitations, ChatGPT has still revolutionized education by exposing students to topics that would otherwise take years to learn. For example, a student no longer has to be a computer programmer to write hundreds of lines of code; ChatGPT can respond to a prompt, produce code, and explain how the code works in a fraction of the time a normal class would.
Garrett Katz, a computer science professor at Syracuse University, says other forms of AI have revolutionized other industries – mainly healthcare.
“There have definitely been big advancements in health and medicine in the past couple of years,” Katz said. “It helps catch things that human doctors or nurses can’t see on their own.”
Still, the AI boom has raised many concerns over its potential to replace jobs. In fact, new research from Goldman Sachs estimates that nearly a quarter of the global work force is at risk from automation due to AI.
One key industry is social services, which Goldman Sachs estimates 33% of all therapists, psychiatrist, and other social workers could soon be reduced to generative AI. Sherie Ramsgard, the owner of Whole Mental Wellness in Fayetteville, says it’s important to remember that technology can’t fully replace the human touch.
“The two most powerful thing that most people need are love and connection,” Ramsgard said. “You’re not gonna get that from an AI bot.”
With the rapid growth of AI and its threat to jobs around the world, some world leaders have called for a halt on new research regarding AI, with countries like Italy even going so far as to ban the use of ChatGPT entirely.