One day – if you believe in the Hollywood fantasy factory – machines will take over the world.
And even if some of them turn out to have a layer of gold over their silicone hearts, like Arnie The Terminator, the future might not look rosy for humanity.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has always seemed the stuff of science fiction, but advances in computing power and software development have begun to take it mainstream.
Many of us are probably unaware of how much AI is already involved in the world around us – from Google’s analysis of us to “smart” gearboxes in cars and the irritating “can we help” bots on some websites.
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ChatGPT – an easy-to-use AI chatbot that can write an essay or computer code upon request within seconds – has started a mini-panic around the world, because it produces uncannily excellent results when asked to put together anything from essays to software codes, based only on minimal starting information.
Universities are now seriously concerned that AI like this will replace plagiarism… but will be far more difficult to detect. Maybe we need a bit of the artificial brainpower here in our government, because the natural stuff is less than optimal.
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