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Technology
OpinionComment
Kai-Lung Hui
Jiali Zhou
Kai-Lung HuiandJiali Zhou

Opinion | Should we let AI take over mundane work? Not so fast

  • It may seem that outsourcing tasks to generative AI like ChatGPT could increase productivity
  • However, it might actually limit the supplementary learning that occurs when people do certain tasks, so AI must be deployed with care

Reading Time:3 minutes
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After the public gained access to OpenAI’s chatbot, which can create human-like written responses to simple user prompts, in November 2022, it shifted how people think about artificial intelligence. Photo: TNS
Kai-Lung HuiandJiali Zhou
Generative artificial intelligence, especially OpenAI’s implementation of ChatGPT, has opened up new possibilities for the creation of intelligent content. In fact, AI-generated content is so good that it reads almost as if it was written by a human being.
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For example, a study by researchers from US universities published in May found that when answering random patient questions from a social media platform, ChatGPT outperformed physicians in terms of both quality of information and empathy. And OpenAI has a said GPT4, the state-of-the-art model underlying ChatGPT Plus, could score in the top 10 per cent in the SAT reading exam for college admissions, the GRE verbal test for graduate school admissions and the uniform bar exam for lawyers.

This tool is expected to be deployed in companies and other organisations to enhance worker productivity. Schools and teachers are also keen to embrace it. Many universities now allow students to use generative AI in course work and assignments. Some local institutions offer free access to ChatGPT, encouraging students to use it in school.
However, generative AI has its limitations. Because the content it produces is generated from a complex large-language model instead of logically developed and based on facts, AI sometimes “hallucinates”, that is, produces incorrect or misleading results, due to insufficient training data, bias and incorrect assumptions. In June, two lawyers in the US were sanctioned for using ChatGPT to produce a legal brief with fictitious case citations. They claimed they weren’t aware ChatGPT could make up cases.

This case raises an important question: how does generative AI affect human capability when people no longer need to develop logical arguments and verify facts when creating content?

08:15

How a Hong Kong school embraces ChatGPT in the classroom

How a Hong Kong school embraces ChatGPT in the classroom

Using generative AI to produce work is akin to outsourcing it to other people. Thus, we can infer its impact on human capability by referencing outsourcing.

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