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Story 鈥榳ritten鈥� by Leeds professor a hit on social media, but the tech has him 鈥榦scillating between extreme excitement and abject terror.鈥欌�嬧��

If you鈥檝e ever taken a Zoom call with Kai Larsen from his home, you鈥檝e probably met鈥攐r at least heard鈥擠ewey.听

Dewey is Larsen鈥檚 pet cockatoo, and since disrupting video calls is Dewey鈥檚 expertise, Larsen thought maybe his pet could showcase some truly disruptive technology. So he tasked ChatGPT with for his son, Alex, starring Dewey.

Dr. Seuss it is not, but while 鈥淭he Cat in the Hat鈥� is supposed to have taken 18 months to write, ChatGPT generated Dewey鈥檚 story in seconds. Larsen continued to feed it prompts to help the software perfect the story; all told, he spent about 10 minutes working on it, using a similar platform, DALL-E, to generate appropriate images.听

At 15, Alex is a little old for a bedtime story, 鈥渂ut he was very excited about it,鈥� Larsen said. When his child was born, Larsen ordered a 鈥渃ustom鈥� book celebrating the start of a new life, 鈥渂ut all they did was print the name into the same book, right? But I noticed that it really resonated with my child at that time鈥攜ou know, seeing yourself in a story. It isn鈥檛 high art by any means, but it can be more personal and more targeted.鈥�

ChatGPT is a chatbot that OpenAI launched in the fall. It鈥檚 not the first of its kind, but ChatGPT has generated incredible buzz for its natural-sounding dialog鈥攇enerated in response to user prompts鈥攖hat has been used in everything from writing , to composing , to teaching novices how to code, to helping students write term papers.

For Larsen鈥攁n expert in machine learning and natural language processing, and faculty director of Leeds鈥� master鈥檚 program in business analytics鈥擟hatGPT, and the possibilities it presents for business, have him 鈥渙scillating between extreme excitement and abject terror.鈥�

鈥淲e have never found a technology that didn鈥檛 create opportunities as well as risks,鈥� Larsen said. 鈥淏ut this is as powerful a technology as I鈥檝e seen in a long time, and we need to be very thoughtful about how we implement it.鈥�

Take something as straightforward as email. Larsen said he may engage in as many as 50 conversations a day, 鈥渁nd it feels like all day, I鈥檓 making decisions in Zoom, email, and LinkedIn and Slack messages, instead of directly furthering my research or teaching,鈥� he said. 鈥淔or industry, we鈥檙e going to see even more communications that will be harder to distinguish from something a genuine person would create. And as that takes up more of our bandwidth, we will need A.I. tools to manage our lives. It will function as a feedback loop.鈥澨�

And unlike the custom book he bought for his child all those years ago, created and printed at significant cost, A.I. can quickly generate and customize a video message for thousands of viewers. A business could send a personalized thank-you video for purchasing a product, then recommend other services you might like based on your purchase history, at a speed previously unimaginable.听

Reinforcing the digital divide?

However, as A.I. is entrusted with more responsibilities, being fluent in working with these tools will become not just crucial to how we work, but how we learn鈥攊n higher education and even K-12 schools.

For students who can afford services like ChatGPT鈥攆ree for now, but not forever鈥攁n understanding of how these tools work, and how they can help them manage a digital deluge in the age of A.I., will have a major advantage over those who cannot. Call it another crack in the digital divide.听

鈥淭hese tools are going to teach students better than they could learn from humans alone,鈥� Larsen said. 鈥淪tudents going to be smarter and more efficient because they have access to these tools. But if we don鈥檛 have equal access to these technologies, we might just further cement inequality in our society.鈥澨�

And the growing investment by companies in this space, along with how quickly it can learn and adapt, means it is evolving and improving all the time.听

鈥淵ou have to remember, at its core, ChatGPT does not know a single sentence. It鈥檚 generating this content from scratch based on an understanding of language, rather than an understanding of the underlying facts,鈥� Larsen said.听

So, if you ask ChatGPT to come up with a list of ways to help manage a troubled employee, the suggestions you get will not necessarily be based in science or ranked by statistical importance鈥攐r be true to the story of the subject matter.听

In 鈥淒ewey the Unhappy Cockatoo,鈥� Larsen noted the protagonist, after being rescued, is happy and sociable in the story, but as an actual rescue bird, 鈥淒ewey never really made friends. He was sort of a loner. But I accepted that the story was good enough for the purpose.鈥澨�

Will it be good enough if the usage is for high stakes? Or will the tools, and our ability to use them more effectively, improve to the point where these discrepancies disappear?听

Yes, Larsen said:听鈥淟ook to the areas where people and language models work together towards faster and better outputs.鈥澨�

On the question of where it will affect our lives, he suggested a different approach. 鈥淚t鈥檚 hard to think of a place it will not create impact,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 think that鈥檚 the much easier, if incomplete, way of looking at it.鈥�

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