Episode 138 - Debunking Fear and Hype Over ChatGPT (and Other Job-Stealing AI)

The promise of artificial intelligence that can do all our menial paperwork has finally arrived. Is it worth the hype?

If you search for videos about ChatGPT on Youtube, you’ll get pages and pages of astonished-looking influencers with wide eyes, and bold headlines claiming that ChatGPT can make you a millionaire overnight. They also claim ChatGPT can diagnose your illnesses, answer your deepest life questions, and defend you in court. Pretty big claims for an artificial intelligence that was just released 6 weeks ago.

The reason why all these videos look the same, by the way, is because the Youtube algorithm favors videos with this exact template: a young(ish) human face looking wide-eyed and baffled expression, bold white or yellow titles, and a catchy headline. It took years for influencers to fine-tune this formula for a click-baity video. Whereas ChatGPT is already flooding Google with buzzy search-worthy articles, twitter blurbs, blogs, and ad copy, which is totally indistinguishable from a human writer. What an army of influencers cracked in five years, ChatGPT has cracked in a few weeks.

In short - ChatGPT is about to replace some jobs. On today’s episode Joe and Todd test the AI to its limits, and answer the big question: Which of our livelihoods are up on the digital chopping block?

Links:

https://beta.openai.com/overview

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/chatgpt-openai-artificial-intelligence-writing-ethics/672386/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHoWGNQRXb0&t=1611s&ab_channel=Greylock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr4yi9onykg&ab_channel=ABCNews