🍌 ChatGPT, cryptocurrencies, and Bananarama

Large language models can do more than just write decent middle-school level essays

As is typical with any advance in AI and robotics, the initial coverage of ChatGPT — OpenAI’s artificial intelligence “large language model” that generates conversational responses to question prompts — emphasizes that it’s pretty cool. Which it is. The following answer to my question about the post-1960s Great Stagnation is a not-terrible answer. Certainly a decent launching pad for further research:

Then come the stories about all the potential downsides, such as job loss. This from the Guardian: “Professors, programmers and journalists could all be out of a job in just a few years, after the latest chatbot from the Elon Musk-founded OpenAI foundation stunned onlookers with its writing ability, proficiency at complex tasks, and ease of use.” Another concern is students using ChatGPT to write essays and papers for them. This from NewScientist: “Schools and educational institutions in the US and elsewhere are announcing bans on the recently released AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT out of fear that students could use the technology to complete their assignments.”

Overall, however, it seems that media coverage falls far short of hysterics about technological unemployment and turning all our kids into cheaters. Perhaps that’s due to the obvious shortcomings of this iteration of ChatGPT. “Some ChatGPT answers have bias, circular logic, and inaccuracies, which are often disguised by very confident prose,” notes Bloomberg reporter Trung Phan.

I also wonder if the shortcomings of autonomous driving technology are perhaps playing a role. The emergence of self-driving tech in the late 2010s led to lots of bold predictions that have yet to pan out. There aren’t a million AVs on the roads. Nor do AVs appear close to causing mass riots among unemployed truckers. And maybe that disappointment has led to a bit more caution about predicting how fast ChatGPT and other such technologies will advance and what their impacts will be.

Then again, maybe more journalists are making more of an effort to think creatively. Here’s New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose: “I believe schools should thoughtfully embrace ChatGPT as a teaching aid — one that could unlock student creativity, offer personalized tutoring, and better prepare students to work alongside A.I. systems as adults.”

More of that, please! I would like to see more coverage of potential upsides, especially the ability of such language models to aid academic research as a sort of “super research assistant.” That aspect of ChatGPT is the subject of new research from finance professors Michael Dowling (Dublin City University) and Brian Lucie (Trinity College Dublin), “ChatGPT for (Finance) Research: The Bananarama Conjecture.” The title makes reference to the 1980s English pop group whose biggest hits in America were “Cruel Summer” and “Venus.” (Well, at least those are the songs I’m most aware of. But the paper’s title was inspired by the lyrics to their (along with Fun Boy Three) 1982 song "It Ain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It)": "It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it / And that’s what gets results.”