Welcome to Round four of the Parenting Roundabout podcast for the week of May eight. I'm Catherine the Lecco and I'm here with Nicole Heretics, Hello and Terry Morrow. Hello. As moms of teens and young adults, we've survived those little kid days. Yeah, we're still rethinking the decisions we've made all through our kids' lives and worrying about what's going on right now. Today's Thursday, which means it's time to give in to our obsessing. And today we're obsessing
about chat GPT, which Nicole says is nothing to be afraid of. It's awesome. Does it clean up its own popcorn in the place? How are you using it? Oh? In a multitude of ways? Really. Yeah. So for those of you that are not familiar with it, you it's a online platform and it kind of looks like a mess messing messenger platform.
So you go in and you give the software a command. So, for example, write an email to my boss telling him that I quit, and within seconds, this very well worded, formatted written email will be generated and which you can copy and use. And so there's a lot of spinoffs from chat GPT because now you can have it create presentations for you and images. I mean, there's just a million ways in which you can use it. So I'm becoming a regular user myself, and it really does make life a
lot easier, to be honest with you. It can generate, right, you know, food plans, It can put together I don't know, like a list of ideas. It can help you brainstorm for an article. It can, But the problem is it can also write the article and your life.
I'm you're a writer here in trouble. This thing does stuff that formerly Katherine and I got paid for, right, Yeah, that's the problem I have with yes, And I see it so much now I see it even on I mean this, this like freelance jobs website has an article here's how you can use chat GBT to help you write your articles. And I'm like, you're supposed to be for us. Why are you saying because once you help, let it help you write your articles, it can just go write
them itself. Yeah, you know editing, Like, oh, look at all these great things you can do to you know, have this artificial intelligence edit your stuff. That's my job. You're putting me out a work, Nicole. I'm taking the person like, no, Well, I mean I'm not using it to a list for you. It helps me with emails and sure, you know, little bits and pieces here and there. Uh, it's helped me generate ideas for things. Um, it's definitely useful in education
and educational situation. So from a teacher's point of view, soon's a million in one way, teachers just set the kids up. See COVID was an experiment. All the kids will just stay home and they'll have their chat GPT lesson. Now, have either of you tried it? No, what's the enemy? You kidding me? Okay, it's gunning from my job. I'm old soon be no longer needed. But still, I mean, there's there's the true certain aspect that you'll need to you know, a writer needs to
intervene with. But at the same time, it's definitely, um a useful tool and it can be very It can also be a form of assiste of technology and level the playing field for a lot of people. That's what wants you to believe, Nicle, that's how they suck you in. I just want to hear. Well, but I saw an article about how there's one like AI chat bot that's meant to be an emotional support bot. So it's coming for the therapists in addition to the writers. So it's coming for everybody.
Yeah, I mean it. Uh, Like I said, this still requires a form of human intervention. Let's not calves here. It's not going to take over everything's famous last learning from us and the ways we use it, and then it will find ways to replace that. I don't know. It just sounds like a big sci fi movie to me, and not one that ends well for my humanity. So but in the short run, not one that ends well for people who would like to make money with words.
Yeah, right, editing them or create, you know, composing them. Yeah, you know, I would still say that the human spark is worth something and that no machine is going to be able to write something as good as somebody doing it out of their head. But you know what it can do a lot of the things we read these days are not filled with the
human spark. They're filled with I got to fill in the blanks in this listical and it can do those fish And you know, in the trajectory in my lengthy career, now that I am an old person of writing editing, you know, it used to be that you had to have some credentials to write and be published, and that stunk if you were trying to start out. But still there was a barrier. And then the Internet made it so
that anybody who wanted to publish themselves online could do it. And then all these websites start up and they just need crap to put up, so anybody can write and make money as a writer. And now it's not even going to be untalented people taking my work. It's going to be a machine. I would at least like it to be an intalented person, but come on, no, it's going to happen. Can I participate or not? Yeah, I declined to participate. But you can embrace some of it too,
extend. I mean, looky, look at teaching, Look at education. Look at all the platforms that are out there now that will support students and teach students different concepts. I don't feel threatened because I know that I still have a place, I have a role, So it's about embracing it. I'm kind of of the like, let's see what it can do. How can it support us? What could possibly go wrong? Now it starts?
I don't know, Catherine, what do you think. Yeah, I mean, I'm more of the like scared the end of the spectrum, especially because of you know, the implications for you know, as Terry said, there used to be some barriers to entry and they're fewer and fewer, and you know, the the going right for writers has basically stagnated or gone way down, oh my god, over time. And obviously if you can get a computer and a to write something, then you don't have to even pay them
at all. So that's that's and it's disturbing. I think it's able to take qualities of certain writers and artists and use them to create something in the manner of what they would do, which is I mean a huge what would the word even be violation of I mean, can you copyright your style?
You copyright your you know, creative I I don't know that you can, but they're going to steal it. And I mean, I think at this point it's still as Nicole said that it still definitely requires human intervention because or oversight or something, because it will it will basically like make stuff up from what I've read. Um, and you know, someone has to definitely many
a human writer as well. That's true. But you know, how do you how do you get in there and say like, yeah, I mean it's that's another scary part because it makes stuff up, like you know so and so is the author of such and such a book. Well, that's fairly harmless. But if it's you know, so and so believes this or that, or they once said blah blah blah, and that's not true, And how do you sort of prove a negative to say that, no, they never said that. And then once it's published, it has the veneer
of truth. Right, I've searching a web browser I use has a search engine that at the top of every search it has an AI paragraph basically answering your question that it's taken theoretically from all the different websites. It's sort of compiled, and sometimes stuff is wrong in there, But is anybody gonna you know? I was able to catch some things that were wrong because I knew,
But if you didn't, you would just assume that was correct. Right, And then once something becomes a public perception, it's very hard to stop it. It just seems so fraught with peril. I mean, if you're gonna use it and then have like a human editor go through in fact check it. But nobody's gonna do that, right, And is there kids are using this even now to write their school papers, right? I think that's possible. And there are detector tools. Yeah, I know there are detectors
for plagiarism from the web, but I don't there are detectors. Yes, It's gonna keep getting better, that's the thing. There are there are tools that you can use that will say like this is you know, eighty five percent likely to be we've written by a human. But like you said, the AI gets better and better and the tools can't keep up. So and there's there's plenty of humans who write like a computer. So right, m h m hmm. That's going to be an interesting challenge for teachers if it's
that easy. I mean yeah, but cell phones were also, I mean everything, everything, everything that is new and is kind of the latest thing will pop up in a school at some point and has to be dealt with. I think he's written by chatbots and then they won't need Child State Team people. They'll be gone. We have plugged in your child's particular abilities and this is this is what came out. It might actually be better perhaps that we get all the pronouns right and stuff. But yeah, I don't know.
I wouldn't mind it. For like, I bet it could write a really good like excuse to the school for why your kid wasn't there, it would Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I come from a world where my job is undervalued and replicated over and over again variety of formats. Yeah, I just you know what, Let's just see where this takes us is kind of my my vibe right now. I don't know. I think maybe we'll have a different conversation in a year when our at we'll have a
conversation with each other. We won't even think that emails like there's a here's a bot that will write all your show notes for you. So see, Katherine, you could save yourself so much time. We don't need you. I will say that the zoom transcript is get does has improved? Are they getting better? Yeah? Pretty soon they'll know. They still can't figure out what our names are, but you will forever be t E R R Y m O R r ow. Yes, but Nicole ratics and Leco boy it
it struggles, but at least can get close on mine. Yes, But other than that, yes, it's it's definitely improving unless we talk over each other then and then it's struggles. So yeah, yeah, feeling like a dinosaur. I'm glad I'm at the end of my career or not early on, but still I can see it coming. Yep, you know, because I see from time to time I've gone slumming for work, and I see some of the really really low paying writing work that's going to go completely go
away. They don't need human beings for that anymore, right, so, and then the that I do will become the little peg why you work? I made a thousand dollars for a TV Guide article in nineteen eighty one. Maybe yeah, now, gosh, I I can't now they would pay magazines pay for anything now yeah. Yeah, it's not two dollars a word anymore like it used to be that. Wow, oh well for sure. How
will it replace parents? That's what we got to think about. There was a there was a headline and the Walls three journal that was like I replaced myself with chat GPS for a day, and I fooled my family, and I'm like, honey, that's not a good thing. I didn't read it because I thought it would be like a horror read. You know, yeah, interest, but it's coming for us. It's been nice knowing y'all. But we will it be able to segue. I don't think it's going to
be able to segue. It may not. I don't think it will do it with the same grace and style like we do. Right, But you know, that's it for today's Round four. Tune tomorrow when we'll share our roundabout roundabout things we've been using or enjoying lately that we think deserve a shout out. Find all our episodes at parenting roundabout dot com and talk back in the comments there, on our Facebook page or on Twitter, where you'll find us at Roundbackchat