ChatGPT is an inflection moment in human history that debates can’t diminish

Alan Turing, played here by Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game (2014), would have been fascinated by ChatGPT. | IMAGE CREDIT The Weinstein Company & Black Bear Pictures

Let’s put ChatGPT into perspective.

We’ll set aside the fascinating debates raging about the level of ‘genuine’ understanding going on in ChatGPT and GPT-3 on one hand, and what exactly it takes to be conscious, whether AI or human, on the other.

Instead let’s celebrate what everyday people are discovering about ChatGPT: that AI has truly come of age and ChatGPT, most of the time, demonstrates at least apparent human-like understanding and mind-blowing generative responses to requests.

ChatGPT *is* the world’s first general-purpose AI

This is a crucial moment in history.

ChatGPT is a trainable, non-hard-coded, embodiment of human-like language-based intelligence.

And it’s moderately to strongly reliable. That’s my measured-assessment as an AI researcher/developer.

Only the stuffiest academic would need to run a Turing Test — or a battery of metrics — to see what every person and his dog can see: ChatGPT is an early version of the fully fledged (text-based) AI that many of us have been waiting for, and for many of us, waiting much of our lives for.