SmarterChild 2.0

Lost during the wedding week craze was the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI. The latest tool in generative AI is perhaps the most impressive yet.

Anyone that was around during the AOL/AIM era probably remembers SmarterChild which was the chatbot that kids like me would say inappropriate shit to just for fun. Besides telling SmarterChild how stupid it was or pulling the deez nuts joke on it for the 40th time, it was a pretty impressive bot in that it was… well useful.

Imagine the year is 2001 and web pages still took almost a minute to load. There were no smartphones or Siri. SmarterChild had it’s place to find you a movie listing or get you the weather report quickly. Of course, along came Google, Siri, Alexa, etc. in the next few years that would render SmarterChild obsolete.

Well perhaps that next iteration of SmarterChild is back in ChatGPT. And it’s back with a vengeance. I have not yet had a chance to play with the tool as I’m running about a week behind in life and work right now, but I have seen the outputs and my is it impressive.

The simplest way I can describe it is that imagine SmarterChild but a whole lot smarter. From writing essays to drafting legal documents to even writing rap lyrics, it seems like the possibilities with ChatGPT are endless. The most exciting (or scariest) part to all this is just how human ChatGPT’s answers are.

I tend to live my life as an optimist, especially when it comes to tech. At the moment, I view ChatGPT as something that would’ve saved me hundreds of hours researching tax law cases in school, not one that would’ve helped me cheat through school. But of course, there’s always the unintended consequences of everything and for perhaps the first time in my life, I am questioning if robots can actually take down humanity.

For now though, I’m excited for SmarterChild 2.0 and the good that may come out of this new tech. When I finally get my head above water to play with it, perhaps I’ll hit it with a Deez Nuts joke for good ole time sake.