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Opinion | ChatGPT’s rise heralds brave new world where AI could rule over replaceable humans

  • Artificial intelligence has demonstrated its potential to replace a host of professions beyond manufacturing, such as knowledge workers and artists
  • Knowledge is power – only now, it is AI that is the most knowledgeable and its ability to learn is seemingly without limits

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OpenAI’s new chatbot ChatGPT has garnered widespread attention since its debut, raising fears that creatives and others in the knowledge economy could soon join factory workers among the humans being replaced by robots and AI. Photo: Getty Images

In 1932, Aldous Huxley published his masterpiece Brave New World, describing a world where technology is highly advanced and environmentally engineered people get their happiness from consumption, sports, sex, and a pleasure drug called soma. He wanted to warn us of the advancement of machines.

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This month, a mixture of the Fifa World Cup, the Harry & Meghan Netflix documentary series and the AI-powered ChatGPT reminded me of his scientific dystopian world. I wonder what Huxley would say if he were still alive today.
He would probably consider the World Cup and the Harry & Meghan series perfect examples to prove his farsightedness. Up to 1.5 billion people may have watched the World Cup final, according to estimates of global viewership. Some 28 million households watched the first volume of Harry & Meghan series within four days of its release.

Although Huxley saw the danger of scientific advancement, he didn’t foresee a world where technology can do jobs that used to be performed by humans. In Brave New World, people are bred and engineered to work and there is no place for the jobless. In this aspect, he would have to catch up with what technology can do and reimagine his world accordingly.

Over the years, industrial robots have gradually replaced assembly-line workers. A decade ago, computer software gradually replaced book-keepers and website designers. Now, artificial intelligence has demonstrated its potential to replace a host of other professions, such as knowledge workers and artists.
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Early this month, we were blown away by ChatGPT, a human-like chatbot powered by AI. It is able to give detailed explanations across many domains of knowledge. It can generate essays, poems, love letters and plays. It can also help people with their existential questions.
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