Public transportation is crucial for the growth and development of any city or town.
It plays a vital role in connecting people, providing them with an affordable and convenient mode of transport. With today’s increasing population and congestion on roads, public transportation is more important than ever.
Just so you know, I didn’t write those sentences. ChatGPT wrote them for me. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s an artificial intelligence chatbot.
I went to the site and wrote: “Write an opinion column.” It wrote an entire column on the topic of public transportation. I didn’t even pick the topic.
The concept of ChatGPT is fascinating and terrifying all at once. Fascinating because of the strides in technology, and terrifying for potential impacts on society.
Testing this chatbot, I made a new request: “Write a Charla Huber column.”
After a short preamble explaining that the bot does not having an actual opinion because it’s a computer program, it wrote: “I can provide a sample Charla Huber Column based on my understanding of her style and points of view.”
It was creepy, but I eagerly read on. Can I be replaced by a bot?
The column it prepared was titled: “Why we need to rethink our relationship with social media.”
It wrote: “Social media platforms have transformed the way we communicate and connect with each other. They have given us unprecedented access to information, enabled us to build communities around common interests and allowed us to stay connected with the world even from the comfort of our homes ….”
It sounds like something I would write.
Earlier in the day, a colleague mentioned the concern that ChatGPT could pose challenges in education. If students turn in a paper written by a chatbot, how would an instructor know?
This piqued my interest because I am associate faculty at Royal Roads University, and I am marking papers. When I started teaching, I was advised to require personalized info and anecdotal experiences in assignments to ensure proper reflection.
I first heard of ChatGPT a few weeks ago. I was giving a presentation to a Rotary Club and the president read a bio to introduce me. It wasn’t a bio I had submitted.
I thought: “Wow, I can’t believe they would take the time to write a bio for me.”
If I was introducing someone and didn’t have a bio to refer to, I would introduce them by name and acknowledge how grateful we were to have them and then politely ask the speaker to introduce themselves.
After the bio was read, the president said it was written by ChatGPT, and asked me if it was accurate.
It was.
I can see that chatbots have their place. Generating a bio via ChatGPT is a good way to save time.
But when it comes to drafting a column, a school assignment or important correspondence, it needs to come from the heart. Using ChatGPT is deceptive and dishonest.
Ultimately, I know a bot cannot compete with me. It can spout facts, but not reflections or memories or experiences.
The old phrase “you are going to get out of it what you put in” is always true.
I know from my experience as a university student that every time I thought an assignment was stupid and a complete waste of time, it ended up being something that was valuable and enhanced my life.
Even now, when something comes up that I think is a ridiculous waste of time or energy, I have a friend who says: “Maybe this will be one of the things that ends up being really valuable.” They are almost always right.
If you skip the assignment and get a bot to draft something, it’s cheating yourself out of growth and education.
I always tell my daughter that “success is a habit.”
How you approach tasks is your baseline. If you are doing the bare minimum or rushing through things with the motto “it’s good enough,” it’s really hard to step up your game when it really counts.
At the Grammys, when Dr. Dre was awarded the inaugural Dr. Dre Global Impact Award, he said: “Remember — everything is important.”
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