Will ChatGPT ‘craze’ turn users into… products?

How will things be when technology previously changed the “game” of manual workers and now invades the future of the world of mind workers with the appearance of ChatGPT?

When ChatGPT became a “desire”

Before the Lunar New Year, I had the opportunity to read a short essay by more than 50 gen Z students (who were born between 1997 – 2012) around two topics of writing about an important issue of themselves but few people know, or Write about your favorite book and why.

Although it is not a “teamwork” project, strangely, the writing style and content of the articles submitted are quite similar. What is more worrying is that many of you choose to write about mental health, and the title of the book also overlaps a lot.

Possible reasons, if any, are that some people “dealing” should copy each other’s ideas, others may be “products” of the patterned teaching of high school. … But when chatting privately, some of you said more about the reason why the keywords you type on Google mostly lead to the above topics and titles.

That said, to see technology in general, persuasive technology (persuasive technology, designed to change the attitudes or behavior of users) and surveillance capitalism (centralized economic system that exploits data). personal data, sophisticated monitoring of user behavior for making profits through business activities on the Internet, social networks) in particular have had a strong impact on life, learning thinking in gen Z. how.

Substantial dependence on technology is gradually becoming “as normal as weighing sugar, milk cartons” with gen Z – the new generation born has access to the Internet.

And because they have had access to technology since the worldview has not yet been shaped, Gen Z is less likely to realize the fact that the more convenient technology makes life, the more skills it takes away from them (such as the ability to ask questions). road, communication, etc.).

Ironically, the society where AI emerges requires young people to be better at soft skills, emotional intelligence (EQ) than ordinary intelligence (IQ).

And ChatGPT – the keyword currently has 420 million results returned on Google – was born, once again becoming not only a topic of discussion among experts, but also a topic of interest to many young people in the country.

Q.Minh – a sophomore – said: “I’m yearning to experience ChatGPT!”. And you, like many other Gen Zs, have spent the day scouring the world for how to use the chatbot system, as ChatGPT is currently limited to a handful of countries.

ChatGPT: To “turn risk into risk”

In fact, almost everything in life revolves around the concept of conformity rather than absolute right and wrong. ChatGPT is no exception. The “plus point” of ChatGPT is too obvious and has been mentioned by many media.

What about the worries or even the scary thing about ChatGPT?

Because ChatGPT is still “young”. Because it was just born at the end of November 2022, the amount of data can hardly be so abundant that “everything knows” or it is difficult to distinguish right from wrong. From there, it is highly likely that it will contribute to spreading “fake news”.

In an article on his personal page last week, “short pants professor” Truong Nguyen Thanh did not hide his concern when ChatGPT “hit” on the core values ​​​​and academic ethics that educators really want. want to teach.

For example, through a topic he assigned to ChatGPT, he admitted that ChatGPT wrote and expressed himself better than himself. This system even adds details to make the article more persuasive even though it’s completely untrue. He argues that academic integrity is at stake.

Many universities in the US have now “banned” ChatGPT in many ways. Including the conversion of exam format to paper-based, face-to-face interviews instead of essay writing as before… because many students asked ChatGPT to write for them.

Some online forums also post articles claiming that ChatGPT explains better and is easier to understand, smarter than professors. In other words, the more excited learners are, the more anxious the teacher is (of course, the good side is forcing education, the teacher must quickly change to adapt).

This is all the more worrisome when critical thinking in Gen Z is thought to be alarming. The media and press everywhere understand that Gen Z prefers to look at images rather than in-depth articles, and that is also the reason why TikTok quickly became the number one social network even though the clips were only 15 to 30 seconds long. a story…

And once “trained” by technology, accustomed to such quick thinking, critical thinking or the skill to distinguish fake news will soon become a luxury. The fabricated story “HUFLIT schoolgirl was gang raped” shared at breakneck speed in one night is an example…

It would be difficult to say that gen Z is only associated with all “minus points” in the era of AI rising, because every generation has talented and bad people. But it is necessary to identify and raise problems related to technology and ChatGPT in particular so that appropriate solutions can be found before it is too late.

And it is never too late to repeat a popular saying in Silicon Valley (USA): “What we use and pay for is the product. What we use without paying for it, We are the product.”