Seemingly overnight, Chat GPT has exploded out of the deepest corners of the emerging tech space and into the mainstream, capturing the imaginations of everyone from students to CEOs. But with any new exciting technology, there tend to be more questions than answers. For the creators of Chat GPT, tech writers, and other AI evangelists, this is a Sputnik level moment in tech, and will have far ranging and transformational consequences for the future.  The impact of this revolutionary technology is already being felt, and this is truly just the beginning.  This does not mean that Chat GPT will transform the world for the better, but will without a doubt come to define life in the 21st century. But for other computer scientists, AI specialists, and the generally unimpressed, Chap GPT is nothing more than a clever party trick.  Chat GPT is not even close to artificial general intelligence, but merely a finely tuned and at times impressive mimic.  Chat GPT is also rife with errors, and is difficult to trust. A program that produces such inconsistent results is far more likely to be a flash in the pan than a technological revolution

Arguing for the motion is Gary Marcus, Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at NYU and a leading voice in artificial intelligence. He is the author of five books, including, The Algebraic Mind, Kluge, The Birth of the Mind, and the New York Times Bestseller Guitar Zero. His most recent book, Rebooting AI, with Ernest Davis, is one of Forbes’s 7 Must Read Books in AI.  

Arguing against the motion is Jeremy Kahn, Senior Writer focused on artificial intelligence at Fortune Magazine

Speaker Quotes 

GARY MARCUS: “I think we have to be realistic that the number of different ways in which these systems could cause harm is quite large and that some of the specific harms are quite serious”.

JEREMY KAHN: “People might have made similar arguments about the printing press and other technologies, about broadcast technologies when they came along, that these things would somehow obliterate the truth. But it actually expanded the potential of people to express themselves.”

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