Everywhere and Anywhere – Understanding the Interest in ChatGPT

Today, there is a specific word at the top of everyone’s mind –  ChatGPT. ChatGPT, stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, and is the latest technology to grab public interest. 

This AI-powered tool – originally created by Elon Musk – streamlines the content creation process to produce code snippets, marketing ideas or to suggest article topics and create short books that engage, inspire and grab audiences’ attention.While Musk has since distanced himself from ChatGPT, further enhancements have been implemented in the automation and transformation realms of Artificial Intelligence. 

ChatGPT was initially launched in December 2015. Since then it has transferred from Silicon Valley to the rest of the country. Now, it must be accepted by the mainstream customer. ChatGPT’s ability to produce actual products and meet the demands of customers will determine its success. As it stands right now, ChatGPT is the “it” app, and several companies are exploring ways to create apps and tools to make it more accessible for people. An enhanced version  – ChatGPT Plus – was launched on November 30, 2022 for the public’s use. 

ChatGPT can be used in various ways to create blog posts and articles by generating ideas, outlines and complete content drafts. It is easy to use: simply input your topic or keyword, and ChatGPT will suggest ideas and relevant subtopics and even write the full article. ChatGPT can generate social media content by helping define a catchy title, add persuasive descriptions and suggesting relatable hashtags.

In addition to creating social media posts and writing articles, ChatGPT can create email campaigns, write subject lines, draft the body of emails and generate suggested calls to action that resonate with target audiences. It can encourage thought leaders, innovators, educators, politicians, students and many others to explore their experiences and viewpoints that may not be readily available in their circles. ChatGPT can expand awareness and provide connections that may not exist when using mainstream social media sites. 

While many have expressed concern about the potential uses of ChatGPT,  teachers are learning to use the tools provided by AI to reach their students and use an out-of-the-box approach. Teachers in the U.S. are a strong segment of the population that are considered early adopters of ChatGPT.

Markus Pfeiffer, Ph.D., an adjunct professor at Regent University, discussed how the digital world is constantly changing. “People who are online consumers and participants are always interested and hungry for new technologies,” Dr. Pfeiffer said, and added that ChatGPT creates a lot of initial excitement about using this new technology.

ChatGPT can be used to assist students and educators in learning. Leaders can use ChatGPT to help drive change and challenge the existing status quo, including seeking new perspectives, identifying possible blind spots, exploring new ideas and communicating with clarity and empathy. In society, people will adopt new ideas, fads or technology quickly, slowly or not all. 

Christians who work in marketing, advertising, law, medicine, technology, engineering and so many other fields must understand the various stages of technological advances to understand the pros and cons of its usage. New technologies will continue to be developed that will create new possibilities.

But with new technology comes new questions about how it will change the status quo for both teachers and students. As Dr. Pfeiffer states, “It is a step beyond the traditional search engine.” 

Since ChatGPT’s release, this technology has caused much debate because of its ability to mimic the human brain.While some may believe that this new technology is akin to letting the genie out of the bottle, others are requesting increased government regulations of the technology. For example, when conducting a generic Google Search on any topic, Artificial Intelligence is in the background bringing up all of the content from which to review utilizing Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) – another tool. While both BERT and ChatGPT are part of National Language Processing (NLP) there are differences in how questions and tasks are processed. 

Another concern when utilizing Artificial Intelligence is plagiarism. While teachers and students are learning about this technology, it will only be a matter of time before a tool is created to help identify the percentage of writing versus plagiarized works crafted using ChatGPT that students may submit as their work. 

Looking ahead to the future, ChatGPT has a lot of potential for good, but it must be used with caution. One crucial way to create healthy parameters is to bring in many experts to prevent bias from creeping in. ChatGPT does not learn preference independently, and human design engineering requires factors in non-bias thinking to create a more objective learning platform.

While infusing the human element into ChatGPT, there are numerous other ways it can improve how we sift through information. We should remove our blinders when utilizing ChatGPT and collectively question how this technology might change the trajectory of humanity. As Christians, we will be called upon to solve a variety of challenges. We should collectively learn how these technologies can serve as another tool in our collective toolkits.