ChatGPT: Is It Going to Take Your Job?

AI is dead; long live AI. IBM's Watson has given up its medical ambitions for a career in customer service. As yet, no semi-sentient robots are effectively helping us live our lives. And Tesla's self-driving feature has crashed, quite literally.

But if you've been on social media recently, you've seen many headlines about an advanced AI chatbot, ChatGPT, taking away jobs from software engineers, lawyers, fitness instructors, and, yes, journalists.

Wondering what's going on? We have answers. (And the answers are not generated by ChatGPT. We swear.)

What Is Chat GPT?

You: Hi.

PCMag: Hi.

Um... I have sort of a weird question. Am I talking to a real person right now?

I successfully completed a CAPTCHA about 30 minutes ago, so I can assure you that I am real. Why do you ask?

I'm seeing all these stories about ChatGPT, but I don't really get what it is. This is like NFTs and cryptocurrency all over again.

Let's hope that like them, ChatGPT leaves nearly as quickly as it showed up.

What do you have against it?

So many things, but I sense you have a question before we get to that.

That's uncanny! I do. What is ChatGPT, even? What does ChatGPT mean?

We'll start with the GPT part, which is an acronym for generative pre-trained transformer. Essentially, that means it's a software model that is trained to follow thought and language patterns like a human does. The 'chat' part means that it then 'talks' to humans in a natural-sounding way.

'Generative pre-trained transformer' doesn’t sound like something a person would come up with.

It doesn’t. It sounds like something an engineer would come up with. 

Is ChatGPT Replacing Humans?

So about those engineers. I read that this ChatGPT thing is trying to take their jobs.

ChatGPT can write and debug code well enough to get a job at Amazon. It learned this skill from code-hosting platform GitHub, but soon it's going to take lessons from actual engineers. OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, is hiring 1,000 coders, in part to explain their methods to ChatGPT in natural language.

Why would people want to train this thing to take their jobs?

Because we never learn from sci-fi.

I heard it's taking other jobs, too.

It's certainly getting ready to enter quite a few professions. ChatGPT is learning to pick stocks like Warren Buffett does. It has passed a Wharton exam and a law school exam. It almost argued a case in traffic court in California, but several bar associations shut that down—for now.

I noticed you left something out.

Oh, did I?

I don't like to point this out, since you're a journalist, but I read about CNET and BuzzFeed employing ChatGPT.

Oh, that. Yeah, that completely slipped my mind. I have not spent many sleepless nights lately thinking about how BuzzFeed's stock skyrocketed after the news broke that the site will use ChatGPT to write quizzes. Or that CNET had been using (and plans to resume using) ChatGPT to write stories.

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Does this worry you? Do you think you'll be replaced by AI?

I actually asked ChatGPT that. It says it's just here to support me.

And you believe that?

Well, I do think that media companies are going to look for ways to save money by using AI instead of journalists. And that comes with considerable risks. As my colleague Jill Duffy pointed out in Why Writers Know Using ChatGPT Is a Bad Idea, ChatGPT uses just the content that it has learned from training, and it knows how to make its 'chat' sound like it knows what it's talking about. This leads to incorrect information and plagiarism, which has already been found in the stories ChatGPT wrote for CNET. Also, ChatGPT can't generate original thoughts, nor can it research and report on news.

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Do you think ChatGPT could be using your words?

Let's ask it.

Sounds like a yes.

Sounds like a yes.

How to Use ChapGPT

How does ChatGPT get information?

ChatGPT was trained on a large chunk of the internet that has been archived starting in 2011 called Common Crawl; WebText 2, which contains outbound links from Reddit that received 3 or more karma points; Books 1, which are free novels available on the internet; Books 2, an online book repository of unknown content; and the English version of Wikipedia. As it mentioned above, ChatGPT hasn't been trained on any data past 2021.

How can I use ChatGPT?

You can go the ChatGPT site, where you'll need to log in with or create an OpenAI account. It's in high demand, so you might be put on a waitlist. But once you're logged in, type your request in the box at the bottom of the screen. ChatGPT will generate a response in seconds.

Is ChatGPT free?

ChatGPT is free. But OpenAI has opened up a fast lane to using it, bypassing all the traffic that slows it down, for $20 a month. This tier is called ChatGPT Plus and gives users interrupted access to the even during peak usage times. Open AI said users will also get “priority access to new features and improvements.”

Is ChatGPT safe to use?

I think a better question is, given all that we've talked about, is it ethical to use it? But that is for you to decide. As for safe, it supposedly does not store your information but I would not put anything sensitive into it.

Can ChapGPT write essays for me?

Sort of. But remember that it is not always correct—it just uses a very convincing tone. And there are ChatGPT plagiarism checkers available already.

How has ChatGPT been paying the bills, if it only just started charging some people?

Well, it had initial founders and investors; and in 2019, it received $1 billion from Microsoft, which just increased its investment by an additional $10 billion. The company hopes to use ChapGPT to power features in Bing and Office.

Wait, Microsoft laid off 10,000 people after it invested $10 billion in ChatGPT?

That's right.

Who Made ChapGPT?

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Who invented ChatGPT in the first place?

It’s made by OpenAI, a nonprofit research lab partnered with a for-profit company. It was founded by Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Elon Musk, and Ilya Sutskever, among others.

OpenAI sounds familiar.

You probably heard of it during the text-to-image craze of what feels like just last week, since it’s also behind the Dall-E AI art generator.  

Is that the thing that you can ask to paint you like a person talking to an AI, and it does that?

I knew you were an AI!

I couldn’t help myself. 

I've heard that Dall-E is not good for artists.

You’re correct. That’s because it derives its art from the work of human artists, and it can be used to generate free images that human artists would have been paid to create.

I used Dall-E to come up with some great memes, though.

I don't know if you want me to absolve you here, or what.

No, what I'm getting at is this: What can I use ChatGPT for? Like, apologies for it maybe taking your job and all, but what can I do with it?

It can handle all that awkward correspondence you avoid, sort of like Joaquin Phoenix does for a living in the movie Her before he is emotionally destroyed by an AI voiced by Scarlett Johansson. You know what, forget that one. You can have it write a resume for you, since those are always terrible to do.

What if it applies for the job and gets it instead of me?

True, true.

Maybe it can help me with a fitness routine. I made some resolutions and haven't really been sticking to them.

I don't think you want to do that. Fitness experts have found its advice could cause injuries.

I'm out of ideas.

You could try just chatting with it.

Oh. Like this, then?

Exactly like this, yes.

Now I really think you’re a robot.

Listen, I have something to tell you about that CAPTCHA test earlier. It took me three tries to identify all the traffic lights in a crosswalk. What is more human than that?

Is there a Turing test for this ChatGPT thing? A way for us to figure out that it’s not actually a person writing?

I am sorry to say that just like many of those in my profession, ChatGPT is bad at math, though it just got an update addressing that shortcoming. So if it manages to successfully file taxes, then you'll know it's not human.

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