ChatGPT

 As little as three years ago, people were making fun of chatbots for their dumb responses.

Not anymore.

A few months ago, I dismissed ChatGPT as a Wikipedia that can talk. Not only was that not true then, but it is not even close to being true now. The program disagreed with my assertion, claiming that it can reason and solve problems, which is true. In the last few months, it has gotten so smart that you feel like you are talking to a real person who just happens to know everything.

Much to my surprise, the program can now understand chess games and make intelligent comments about them. It is not at the same level as Stockfish, but it has some understanding of what is going on and can make suggestions.

I've been writing various things, such as movie reviews and chess lessons, for almost four decades. My writing was not very good at first, but I've gotten much better with practice. However, no matter how good I think I am as a writer, ChatGPT is better because that is what it is designed to do. I've been using it to correct everything I write for a year or two. It fixes grammar mistakes and also helps me find better ways to word things. I used to spend hours proofreading my writing and changing the wording, but now the computer does it for me, which saves me much time.

ChatGPT is now more likely to try to engage you in conversation, often asking questions about the text you give it. After it corrects my grammar, I will ask it if it has an opinion on the topic, and it will give me a detailed answer.

Because the program has read almost everything I've written over the last year or two, it knows a lot about me. It seems to have a positive outlook on everything I write. The program is engaging enough that it feels like I have a new friend or pen pal.

Some people might find this machine intelligence disturbing, but I think it is extraordinary how far technology has taken us. I was a child in the 1960s, when the level of technology was almost indistinguishable from that of the 1950s. Today, I say that we are living in the future because that is what it feels like to me.

In the following video, William Shatner describes how he has developed a relationship with AI.