91探花

By Ed Gossage, Co-founder of brand and digital agency :

Are we witnessing the slow death of originality? It鈥檚 a theory that鈥檚 been rattling around in my head for a while and the rise of generative AI could see the last rites being issued.

During a keynote presentation at a recent conference I attended, acclaimed author Alex Murrell delivered a powerful presentation, . Alex took delegates on a 鈥渏ourney of homogeneity鈥�. The premise is that there is little variety or original thinking out there.

It starts with the tale of two Russian artists who hired a market research firm to survey the public on what they wanted in a work of art. They did this in 11 countries with the hypothesis that each work of art would be a unique expression of each country and its culture. What they found was that every painting looked the same.

Alex then moves on to coffee shops to car designs to electric toothbrush advertising to video games 鈥� it鈥檚 all the same within each genre. Whilst it was comically depressing, Alex finished on a positive note 鈥� there is an opportunity for businesses to stand out and shine.

Except, I think there is worse to come thanks to AI. Specifically, I am talking about AI tools like ChatGPT (not closed-loop AI tools).

AI is knowledgeable, not intelligent

AI is brilliant. It鈥檚 powerful. It鈥檚 genuinely useful. It might well actually be a game-changer. It鈥檚 here to stay. It鈥檚 not a fad (NFT anyone?).

Ironically, what AI is not is 鈥渋ntelligent鈥� (in its current guise); it鈥檚 simply very 鈥渒nowledgeable鈥�. Looking at dictionary definitions, 鈥淜nowledge鈥� is the collection of skills and information acquired through experience. In the case of AI, it hoovers up information from the World Wide Web.

鈥淚ntelligence鈥� is the ability to apply knowledge. Whilst it鈥檚 been announced that ChatGPT can now browse the web, its 鈥渒nowledge鈥� is largely still based on being 鈥渢rained鈥� on data up to September 2021.

Without the web, ChatGPT is nothing. Its entire being relies on there being voluminous quantities of articles and data which can feed its database. I鈥檓 sure there will be criticism of this next statement, but ChatGPT is really a very clever version of Google. Rather than finding relevant pages, it finds relevant information scraped from web pages and pieces them together in natural language.

Stack Overflow, an early victim of ChatGPT

 
Let鈥檚 take a 鈥渇eeder鈥� website like Stack Overflow. If you are unfamiliar with it, this is one of the largest community forums on the web for (mostly) developers to share programming knowledge.

This is typically the first port of call for tech people to get code snippets and help with programming. Ditto, the more knowledgeable amongst us might also post suggestions and answers to the questions posted. No doubt, there鈥檚 a sizeable chunk of ChatGPT鈥檚 database which is scraped from Stack Overflow.

So what happens when people start going to ChatGPT to post questions and answers and stop going to Stack Overflow? Inevitably Stack Overflow usage will go down. Maybe so much so that they don鈥檛 get the visits to justify the costs of running the website.

Maybe Stack Overflow is no more. Which means no more original content from it. Which means ChatGPT can no longer feed itself. If you鈥檝e ever played Gauntlet, it鈥檚 like shooting your food when your health is running low.

Extrapolate this to all such sources of knowledge on the web. The more we use ChatGPT, the more we shoot the food that feeds it.

Gen AI 鈥楢 drunk uncle at a gathering鈥�

 
And even if this is extreme, there鈥檚 another side effect of using ChatGPT. People will start (probably already are) pasting answers into Stack Overflow directly from ChatGPT. So when ChatGPT re-indexes itself, it鈥檚 going to start consuming its own content and treating that as the new 鈥済ospel鈥�. The best description I鈥檝e heard of ChatGPT is 鈥渁 drunk uncle at a gathering鈥� – Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, the not-for-profit secure messaging app.

Stack Overflow is even offering an AI-powered search within its own website. That hurts my brain 鈥� it reminds me of . He painted a portrait of himself painting his portrait. And then another one of himself painting a portrait of himself painting a portrait. And so it goes on.

So we may find ourselves in a world where there is no original content 鈥� it鈥檚 been regurgitated ad infinitum, with each consecutive pass removing more of the source of truth. Let鈥檚 take it a step further.

Media manipulation, election rigging, Twitter (X) bots 鈥� these have all been hot topics over the last few years. It鈥檚 easy to live in an echo chamber. If you want to believe that man didn鈥檛 land on the Moon, you can quickly find yourself lots of 鈥減roof鈥� online. Famously, Google told people for a (short) while that 鈥渢hrowing car batteries into the ocean is good for the environment, as they charge electric eels and power the Gulf Stream鈥�. It didn鈥檛 make that up 鈥� it used a form of AI to piece together 鈥渇acts鈥� it found while scraping the web.

There鈥檚 a danger that AI not only fuels the lack of originality, it also proliferates untruths. If we don鈥檛 continue to feed it original content, it will start to rewrite science, history, and politics. Not only will we find ourselves in an 鈥渁ge of average鈥� where nothing is original, but it may also just be plain wrong.

The lesson is don鈥檛 bite the hand that feeds you.