I can't tell what is worse now: the sycophantic ChatGPT hype guys/gals who write articles "it's coming for all of our jerbs!", or articles like this one that deliberately misuse ChatGPT and then say "it's overhyped". They're both missing the point. Yes, ChatGPT can be tricked, confidently give wrong answers, but it is still ludicrously useful. It is basically like having an incredibly smart engineer/scientists/philos…
I don't know that it's an "incredibly smart" anything; I think it'd be better described as incredibly well-read, with poor discretion. But there's definitely uses for a tool that produces a lot of boilerplate content that a human can then proofread (ex: writing cover letters, filling out unstructured paperwork, etc.) Edit: I personally underestimated the use-case, because the "more optimal" thing to do when auto-fill…
But likely much better read and with much better discretion that most of people writing content these days.
Which I think is part of the point that people are missing. ChatGPT’s output might not be as good as the best writing, but most of what people read is mediocre content with questionable accuracy. Being better than the majority of the writing being consumed is still a pretty big deal, even if it’s not better than all of the writing that’s being consumed. Especially since we can expect ChatGPT to get better.
The same is true for AI art. Could you hire a trained artist and work with them to do a better job? Probably, but most people don’t have the time and money to pursue such a project.
There are still trained artisans producing high quality physical goods that you can place an order with. But the masses have greatly benefited from the factories that have produced lower quality products that are much more widely available, and available at a moments notice. It’s not wrong to point out when the mass produced stuff might not have the same quality as the products produced. But if you only focus on this aspect you miss the reason why mass production is important.