The announcement of a successful test of nuclear fusion yesterday, which produced more power than it took to create the very fast reaction, is a reminder that progress in many areas of life are not obvious or even on most people's radar.
If lots of technical challenges can be overcome -- and it likely will take decades for that -- fusion offers a way to further disentangle fossil fuels and even nuclear fission from the power grid. The process produces no harmful radiation or other environmental damage. It's the stuff of Star Trek or other sci-fi shows and books.
I assume the development of cell phones was somewhat similar, with decades of work going into the technology and then the "sudden" release of smart phones.
The food synthesizers of Star Trek are a great example of a fictional breakthrough that quickly changes attitudes toward food and hunger... though most viewers have no idea HOW a machine creates food on demand. there has to be some sort of fuel, I would think, or at least some substance to mold into a requested hot tea or ice cream sundae.
We should not passively sit back and hope that scientists will "solve" or at least minimize problems like affordable energy and the abolition of hunger, and we should always be alert for how technological leaps might turn out to be negative.
Smart phones are a terrific example of "unintended consequences" and how the ubiquitous phone connects everyone at all times, though only tenuously, and how the phone contributes to shorter attention spans, distracted driving and walking, etc.
Barring some disaster, we don't go backwards technologically. Smart phones will not go away any time soon, nor will artificial intelligence or online shopping through Amazon. Our only hope is to find best ways to incorporate tech into our lives without losing our humanity.
During an online department meeting for Metro yesterday (a wrap up for the semester), I brought up ChatGPT, the newly released AI software that does a solid job of mimicking human speech and sentence construction.
It was apparent that I was the only one of the college teachers who had actually established an OpenAI account and experimented with the program. In fact, the chair clearly thought the samples of essays that she had read in the media were not "up to snuff." Maybe, but technology tends to pick up momentum and how long will it take for the ChatGPT responses to create well-argued essays and posts that are indistinguishable (maybe better!) than even solid college writers?
As usual, universities will hang back until they are forced to recognize new trends and then will try to hustle to create new policies and ethics documents. They will be flawed since they will be rushed.
But it occurred to me that it shouldn't be the 72-year-old writing instructor who is fiddling with AI for writing... at least not ONLY me.
At least one of my teaching peers described the AI-produced writing as "terrifying," which led me to mention that for many of the students I work with there might be some good coming out of quickly creating a basic essay structure. Would it be top-notch? Probably not (for a while) but a solid start can lead to giving young writers a foundation on which to add specific examples, for instance.
My initial experiments have produced solid short pieces filled with assorted claims. Most of those claims are not supported with specific examples. Perhaps THAT will be the future of student writing: expanding and sharpening arguments that begin with machine-created claims.
Yes, AI could go horribly wrong, but it might become a useful tool to produce better thinkers and better writers.
It will be up to us, if we take the time to explore.
No comments:
Post a Comment