My 12 years old son asked me this morning about ChatGPT and if it will spare future kids from schools. As we went on in an interesting conversation, I realized that we are equally confused about intelligent machines, despite the 30 years gap between us.

I was 16, back in 1998, when I first used the internet on a 486 Compaq, and the very simple idea that I could access computers anywhere in the world was mind blowing. This was the beginning of the connectivity miracle, that constituted the DNA of what you are using now to read this letter. Twenty four years later, your company has just brought the miracle of intelligent machines to life. It is not GPT’s Large Language Model or sophisticated learning algorithms and stochastic functions that what brought machine intelligence to life, of course not, it is the adoption rate of your polished technology. Your robot will soon cross one billion users, making it the largest intelligent machine a man has built. One billion people who will ask questions to your robot and wait for answers, to play at first, but then to learn. One billion people will start to have frequent, perhaps daily, interactions with an intelligent machine that can help them augment their intelligence, but more dangerously, their intellect. Just imagine university students using GPT and other third-party products, which will enhance and improve its capabilities, to write theses and publish papers. Just imagine how will it be possible for anyone to represent any profession or career online and be an expert behind a blog, a magazine, or an online community. In the matter of fact, words like experience will soon be hollow and meaningless, because the ability to store knowledge, connect and use it according to sense impressions and cognitive signaling will carry very little value — if any — compared with ChatGPT-X.

My son is confused because he doesn’t know if he should still be learning at school or not, because he doesn’t know if you would find a job or not, or if even if his painting and art talents would be of any value in few years. I am confused because OpenAI keeps silent about the most fundamental questions concerning GPT now and in the future: What is its impact on epistemology? What is the distinction between human-created and machine-synthesized knowledge? And how will it be possible to distinguish between them? And what is the future of learning and pedagogy with ChatGPT-X?

The massive organic adoption rates, that OpenAI is now celebrating, do promise the possibility of a better future, there is no question about that. But in the same time they definitely ring the bell for ensuring that it will be used the right way! The company’s leadership and investors must be aware that they are creating a singularity and it will test their integrity and ethics at first, and then all of us will follow. It is the right time for OpenAI to declare its position on these crucial issues to the public, before they release GPT-4.

My 12 years old son asked me this morning about ChatGPT and if it will spare future kids from schools. As we went on in an interesting conversation, I realized that we are equally confused about intelligent machines, despite the 30 years gap between us.

I was 16, back in 1998, when I first used the internet on a 486 Compaq, and the very simple idea that I could access computers anywhere in the world was mind blowing. This was the beginning of the connectivity miracle, that constituted the DNA of what you are using now to read this letter. Twenty four years later, your company has just brought the miracle of intelligent machines to life. It is not GPT’s Large Language Model or sophisticated learning algorithms and stochastic functions that what brought machine intelligence to life, of course not, it is the adoption rate of your polished technology. Your robot will soon cross one billion users, making it the largest intelligent machine a man has built. One billion people who will ask questions to your robot and wait for answers, to play at first, but then to learn. One billion people will start to have frequent, perhaps daily, interactions with an intelligent machine that can help them augment their intelligence, but more dangerously, their intellect. Just imagine university students using GPT and other third-party products, which will enhance and improve its capabilities, to write theses and publish papers. Just imagine how will it be possible for anyone to represent any profession or career online and be an expert behind a blog, a magazine, or an online community. In the matter of fact, words like experience will soon be hollow and meaningless, because the ability to store knowledge, connect and use it according to sense impressions and cognitive signaling will carry very little value — if any — compared with ChatGPT-X.

My son is confused because he doesn’t know if he should still be learning at school or not, because he doesn’t know if you would find a job or not, or if even if his painting and art talents would be of any value in few years. I am confused because OpenAI keeps silent about the most fundamental questions concerning GPT now and in the future: What is its impact on epistemology? What is the distinction between human-created and machine-synthesized knowledge? And how will it be possible to distinguish between them? And what is the future of learning and pedagogy with ChatGPT-X?

The massive organic adoption rates, that OpenAI is now celebrating, do promise the possibility of a better future, there is no question about that. But in the same time they definitely ring the bell for ensuring that it will be used the right way! The company’s leadership and investors must be aware that they are creating a singularity and it will test their integrity and ethics at first, and then all of us will follow. It is the right time for OpenAI to declare its position on these crucial issues to the public, before they release GPT-4.