Chat GPT, Generative AI and the future of creative work

Generative AI is being hailed as the next era-defining technological innovation, changing how we create new content online or even experience the internet, and in the process sparking a Silicon Valley frenzy.

Yet even as venture capitalists pump billions of dollars into AI tools such as Chat GPT, there is growing concern about their ethical and legal ramifications.

What is generative AI?

Put simply, generative AI is artificial intelligence that can generate new content, rather than simply analysing or acting on existing data.

Able to produce text and images, programme code, poetry, and artwork, Harvard Business Review said the software uses “complex machine-learning models to predict the next word based on previous word sequences, or the next image based on words describing previous images”.

The most talked about field is text-to-image AI models, such as OpenAI’s DALL-E programme, which generate detailed original images based on simple written inputs.

“The buzz around generative AI today is deafening,” said Forbes.

The sudden emergence of generative AI technology has sparked a “frenzy” in Silicon Valley, said Forbes, with “no topic in the world of technology attracting more attention and hype right now.”

Why the buzz around Chat GPT?

Released less than two weeks ago by San Francisco-based Open AI, which was co-founded by Tesla billionaire Elon Musk in 2015, Chat GPT is already making huge waves in the technology sector with over a million regular users, according to CEO Sam Altman.

A “stunningly lifelike conversational language system” designed to “answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests,” The Times described it as the “world’s first truly useful chatbot”.

Based on natural language generation technology, it is “implemented in such a way that you just chat with it in a web browser as if you were slacking with a colleague or interacting with a customer support agent on a website”, reported TechCrunch.

What are the real-world implications?

Generative AI is already “revolutionising how we experience the internet and the world around us”, reported VentureBeat, highlighting the surge in global AI investment from $12.75 million in 2015 to $93.5 billion in 2021, with the market projected to reach $422.37 billion by 2028.

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/technology/958787/chat-gpt-generative-ai-and-the-future-of-creative-work