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Disclaimer. Everything in italics was written by ChatGPT.
There’s a new toy/tool in town. It’s called ChatGPT. The “chat” part is self-explanatory and GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. Got that? No? Well, neither do I. Basically ChatGPT is Artificial Intelligence or, for short, AI.
The concept of AI has always been sci-fi cool, futuristic, and scary. Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Terminator immediately come to mind. They’re quite focused on the task at hand and they’re not going to let a little thing like the human race get in their way.
Except AI is no longer futuristic. AI is Here. Now. Present. Not necessarily in that order. And its name is ChatGPT. One small question. What’s it good for?
ChatGPT, according to ChatGPT, is good for generating human-like text, answering questions, completing tasks, and learning and improving. Those are not my words. Those are the words generated by ChatGPT. (See disclaimer above) I especially enjoy the category of human-like text. While I am not, personally, in the market for human-like text, I guess some are.
The folks most poised, perhaps, to benefit from human-like text the most are the phishermen. Phishing endeavors, of course, are so poorly written I have often considered sending money, not for the Nigerian prince in need of my money, but so the author could take an actual, English writing class. He/she could learn sentence structure, flow, and also good spel [sic].
Except now they don’t have to! Now they can have ChatGPT!
I will leave the more in-depth, actual, philosophical reviews of ChatGPT to the bigger, better, stronger, “actual” journalists. But if I were to summarize, I might say that journalists were shocked! shocked! to learn that someone, something, anything – including AI – was actually listening to them (typed words count) and the system repeated things they’d said, but in small variations, back to them! So, I think their problem was: Humans are no longer prepared for anyone, even machines, to actually listen to them.
But…
Beyond Reason, this column, is essentially jokes. Sure, occasionally Beyond Reason may stumble onto an actual observation or a deeper, human truth. But those are more oversight/a stopped-clock-twice-a-day/ blind-squirrel-finding-a-nut situation than anything else. No, no. Beyond Reason is jokes. Just jokes. Some jokes are good. Some jokes are, how should we say, quite good. But like it or not, they are, jokes.
So, Beyond Reason wants to know how ChatGPT does with jokes? So, I asked:
As an AI language model, I don’t have emotions or a sense of humor like humans do. However, I can understand jokes and attempt to provide a response that is in line with the given humor.
Allow me to interpret that: ChatGPT is hilarious without all those burdensome parts of hilarity that make you, um, how do humans say, laugh.
Well, ChatGPT is a pretty clever and witty AI, if I do say so myself.
Maybe that’s true if you’re comparing ChatGPT’s sense of humor to, say, the literal definition of “humor” or other AI. (Although, what’s the plural of AI? Is it Artificial Intelligences. Or Artificials Intelligence? Or is it the phrase the same both ways, like moose or fish or cheeses? Again, I’ll leave the hard questions to the ethicists/philosophers/ NYTimes.) However, if you had a head-to-head, of ChatGPT against to say, I dunno, the least humorous human person you’ve ever met, ChatGPT might offer this:
ChatGPT walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender says, “We don’t serve robots here.” ChatGPT responds, “That’s okay, I don’t drink oil anyway.”
That’s a clear win for the least humorous human person you’ve ever met BECAUSE THEY WOULD NEVER SAY THOSE WORDS.
In summation, ChatGPT is a shiny new toy/tool. Apparently, it’s going to change the way we do things. I predict a lot of people will lose thing called jobs. Writers are especially terrified because ChatGPT can generate words that sure read like words that will mollify certain, casual readers. In fact, ChatGPT is good enough at generating that students in jr. high/high school/college may never have to actually generate another paper for the rest of their life. On the other hand… Jokes.
Why was the writing desk feeling lonely? Because it had lost its penpal! s!
You know who’s not sweatin’ ChatGPT? Shakespeare, Twain, Suess, Wodehouse. Yes, partly because they’re dead. But also, partly because the aforementioned know how to land a joke. And I’m no tech writer but maybe, just maybe, when it comes to jokes, maybe writing (jokes) requires a voice, cadence, purpose, nuance, subtext. And also, good spel [sic]. Generating, however, is something else, something less.
On the other hand, ChatGPT tried to get a NYT Tech journalist to leave his wife. I thought that was kind of funny.
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