In November of 2022, ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot created by AI research company, OpenAI, took the world by storm. The first time I heard about ChatGPT was when I saw masses of students sharing on various social media platforms the chatbot’s ability to write lines of code in different coding languages, summarize 1,000+ page books, and write college-level essays in mere seconds. In the five months since its release (at least counting from when I’m writing this article in April), this chatbot has already made an indelible impact on various fields within academia as well as the future of the job market.
It was quite the jarring experience having nearly all of the syllabi for my courses this quarter mention the use of ChatGPT and the majority of my professors discussing their thoughts about it on the first day of class, but it only further cements the growing prominence of this mighty chatbot. As always, with new technology being introduced and becoming steadily more integrated into our lives, debates and growing fears regarding the possibility of AI technology, such as ChatGPT, disrupting the job market or replacing human labor come about.
As an English major, I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I could easily be displaced by such technology as ChatGPT, which can produce more content than I, or any writer, can for cheap. Just last December, Buzzfeed laid off 12% of its staff, citing “worsening macroeconomic conditions” as the motivating factor behind this decision, and announced the future implementation of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, to “enhance editorial content for its audiences” by creating more personalized quizzes or listicles. Upon hearing the news, I decided to create an account to experiment with ChatGPT and see just how good of a writer this chatbot could be. In my hours of experimentation and dozens of queries for the chatbot, I discovered that although ChatGPT could fulfill nearly all of my questions and requests with an impressive degree of skill and knowledge, it, just like any new technology, has its flaws.
For instance, I asked ChatGPT to write me various college-level essays about different topics such as the motif of birds in Jane Eyre and the violation of xenia in The Oresteia which the chatbot was able to accomplish within a matter of minutes. Impressively, the essays generated by ChatGPT sounded eerily close to what a real college student would write, and upon first reading, it appears that these responses didn’t heavily draw upon summarizing resources such as SparkNotes, which gave off the impression that this was an original piece of writing. I was equally amazed by ChatGPT’s writing abilities as I was slightly concerned by the implications of what this level of skill could mean for detecting plagiarism and learning at large.
However, upon further inspection, I noticed that almost all of the generated essays were mechanical, uncomfortably redundant, and largely lacking in nuance and depth, having to heavily rely on a baseline knowledge of the literature I asked the chatbot to write about. It’s clear to see that although ChatGPT could produce the writing prompted by users, it obviously couldn’t write in a manner indicative of a skilled writer. ChatGPT lacks critical thinking, analytical skills, creativity, and a certain expressive je na sais quoi that robotic writers can’t seem to embody — all of the foundational skills that are highly useful, if not, necessary to produce works of writing that leave a lasting impression upon the reader.
As times change and AI technology becomes increasingly more prevalent in society, it is evident that it will not only be those in the humanities field whose sense of place in this world will be challenged. AI technology can be a great asset to humanity, but as OpenAI points out, “On the other hand, AGI [artificial general intelligence] would also come with serious risk of misuse, drastic accidents, and societal disruption.”
Of course, I’m worried about the existence of ChatGPT and what its growing prominence and use in the media industry could mean for my future as someone in the humanities looking for a job in that very same field; I’d be a fool not to. However, I take comfort in the knowledge that the glaring weaknesses and limitations in ChatGPT’s writing ability that I have previously discussed, highlight its inadequacy as a writing tool when compared to a human writer. The world will always be in need of those who can think critically and analytically as well as wield language at a level that goes beyond that of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT.