Generative Artificial Intelligence: Black, White, or Gray?

 I've had an interesting week playing and experimenting with generative AI. I'm not talking about those weird filters on social media. Oh no, I am talking about ChatGPT. I have previously been hesitant to just go to the internet and type in ChatGPT because I was hypervigilant about avoiding viruses or downloading anything. I wasn't sure what I was looking for online and, therefore, I didn't trust just any website who claimed to be ChatGPT or AI. Going out into the internet and roaming around can be similar to going into cities and getting lost in neighborhoods. Some of those neighborhoods just aren't safe. 

I was lucky enough to finally get a reliable web address to access ChatGPT. It was from my college professor, so I knew it was legit. Here's the link to the website in case you were also wondering: https://chat.openai.com/. I didn't realize it was just like other websites where you create an account and then sign in. I was able to quickly just create one easily via my Google account. 

I was a little surprised to find ChatGPT to be simple, with a little textbox where I am to enter a prompt. It is asking, "How can I help you?" The first thing I asked it to do was create a lesson plan. As an educator, lesson plans are almost always on the mind, in the background if not the foreground. It created one on argumentative texts. I was somewhat impressed by how fast is was and how organized the lesson was and yet also not impressed by the lack of specifics and details. I tried a few other things like asking it to create a parody song that teaches how to determine key ideas that follows the tune of a popular Taylor Swift song. Here is the link to my first chat with ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/share/69285522-72ed-4b70-b2a9-f21d8d247384.

I loved how I could ask ChatGPT to make changes and edits to the content it created without having to recreate the original prompt. However, I also noticed that sometimes it ignored some of my suggestions and requests. I thought that was odd. The last thing I asked in that specific chat was for ChatGPT to write a blog post for me for this week. I included my discussion posts from my online course so it would have a baseline for what I had to say about my experiences. You can read it at the above link. I wanted to see what it would say and see if it could pass for sounding like me. It did manage to include the things I mentioned in my discussions, but some of the wording and phrases are things I would never really say in a blog post. It did a pretty good job, overall. 

Unfortunately, I was unable to play around with Gemini because it was blocked from my work computer. I did go watch some YouTube videos of it being utilized and was impressed with all that it could do. I would have loved to test it out myself. I fully intend to do so sometime in the future. 

After some discussion with my very intelligent teenage son, I learned generative AI has its setbacks. There are limitations in its abilities. My son explained to me that AI has been known to "hallucinate" and make stuff up and pass it off as fact. I saw it do this in my own experience with ChatGPT. I asked for alignment with the TEKS and it gave some standards that sounded more like Common Core. My son also pointed out to me that AI steals intellectual and artistic property, especially those that make art and videos, but I can also see it happening in the writing of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Some of it probably also takes from music, although I have not gotten to that point in my exploration yet. 

So the question in my title was asking if AI is black, white, or gray. I would that depends. It can be used for bad when students wish to plagiarize or avoid writing essays. It can also be bad when it replaces the jobs of humans but make inhumane decisions. Such as AI approving or denying medical or insurance claims. AI can also be good, however. It can be used to make some jobs easier as well as enhance everyday activities. It can help us save time and energy on projects or research. Educators can use them for so many purposes, including providing individualized feedback on essays without having to personally read them all. I recently learned about a great AI for teachers called Magic School. It can be helpful in so many ways and I can't wait to get to spend more time figuring it out so that I can truly utilize it. What about the gray area of AI? I'm not sure there is one. What it really comes down to is: are we using AI with good intentions are bad ones? On a final note, my personal opinion is that we should fully know and understand the limitations of AI and remember to not let it fully replace jobs that require humane decisions to be made. Lastly, don't fight it, but make it better and teach people how and when to use for the advancement of human growth, knowledge, and evolution.