What does ChatGPT spell for humanity?

Data expert Amos reflects on humanity's role as Artificial Intelligence software like ChatGPT offers to write the script in the humanitarian space

OpenAI recently released their highly sophisticated artificial intelligence chatbot called ChatGPT. The world is abuzz with it, wondering what the impact on life will be. Especially in education as not only can ChatGPT find all sorts of information, it can write applications, essays, and tests with ease. This challenges the current model of education practiced in most schools worldwide. What is the role of the teacher? the classroom? the school? But also, what is the information we need to memorise and recall and what do we just need to know where to find it? or the questions to ask?

ChatGPT also appears to write letters, media releases, stories, and blogposts with ease. Perhaps this post is written by it? It is not difficult to imagine a (near) future where many ‘writing’ jobs disappear or reduce significantly in number. Report writers, proposal writers, planners, and so on all will have their roles impacted. Not tomorrow, and not next year, but 5 years from now things will likely look different.

In the humanitarian space, ChatGPT can help with shaping proposals and project designs already. It is far from perfect, but it can provide all the basic structure and content for a proposal. Yes, including logframes, monitoring plans, risks, and context. And it will only get better.

So it begs the question, what is our role?

Education is not about merely sharing information. It’s about turning information into wisdom, about relationships and learning to work with others. Most jobs are.

Perhaps our role as humans is to give information meaning, to give life meaning. Perhaps our role is to move beyond information and towards connection. And perhaps our role is point out bias, racism, exclusion that exists in information, knowledge, and life. Including in ChatGPT. Afterall, ChatGPT is trained on information discovered, created, and given meaning by fellow humans. ChatGPT is standing on the shoulders of giants, just like us. And those giants are not perfect.

Amos Doornbos is CCD’s Data Interoperability Working Group Lead and Disaster Management Strategy & Systems Director at World Vision International. Contact him at amos_doornbos@wvi.org. This article was first posted on his blog This Is Amos.