AI is turning into the software house and salesman’s wet dream Everyone needs it and every CIO will have to justify not having it. Over a series of deeper dives, we’ll go into this.
I’ve been using AI for many years for things as decision support or as a learning analysis tool. Prolog, a specialist AI programming language was developed in 1972. I bought a copy in a local computer shop and they had to copy the 5 1/4″ floppies to 3.5″ floppies for me. Around at the same time was a game called Wumpus. You get asked a question and the decision tree below keeps asking until it gets your answer or has to ask you what it should be. Nowadays, that could be a form of supervised machine learning (ML), a subset of AI.
Amazon uses such things like unsupervised ML which doesn’t look for giving you answer, but from recognising patterns and clusters. They organise their warehouse on what people typically buy together. They also make suggestions on what else other people bought when you find an item you want.
Then there is the glory of the moment CrapGPT. You feed in a few words and it will search and try and build connections and output stuff. Sometimes used in customer service in a Wumpus type manner, but also for “content creation”. There are adverts all over the place saying that CrapGPT can write articles, books and even your assignments and home work.
Now here’s the thing I get asked very specific questions on the QUestion Or Answer forum Quora. Things tend to be about food, restaurants, UK firearms law and financial crime. I got asked a question on Quora about factors in running a successful restaurant. Two eloquent answers were already in the mix. Both had Good headlines, sub-headers, eloquent prose and suitably inserted stock photography. Both, obviously CrapGPT? Another chap, on another question, the same format and eloquence. So, I called bullshit on him. He replied with something like “I not use ChatGPT init”, which left me thinking he was possibly not the author of the original answer.
Now, what CGPT does not do is a plagiarism check, as it is gathering other peoples stuff anyway. Maybe more commercial versions or add-ons will do that for you? I submitted a paper for my Law Master degree and got a plagiarism caution. My lecturer rang me to discuss and he was able to tell me the source from where I had ripped the quote from. It was my own website, so the bust was taken off my record.
Just to emphasize this:
