ChatGPT: A Revolution in AI-Powered Conversational Interfaces

The real column written by ChatGPT, when I asked it to do so:

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made immense strides in transforming various aspects of our lives. One of the most notable advancements in this field is the development of AI-powered conversational interfaces, and among these, ChatGPT stands out as a leading example.

ChatGPT is a state-of-the-art language model developed by OpenAI, which has been trained on a massive dataset of internet text to generate human-like responses to various types of questions and prompts. This model is capable of performing a wide range of tasks, from answering general knowledge questions to generating creative writing and even carrying out complex mathematical calculations.

One of the most impressive features of ChatGPT is its ability to understand and respond to natural language inputs. This enables users to interact with the model in a conversational manner, just as they would with another human being. Additionally, ChatGPT can also maintain context and track important details from previous conversations, allowing for more fluid and coherent interactions.

Another key advantage of ChatGPT is its versatility. The model can be integrated into a wide range of applications, from virtual assistants to customer service chatbots, and beyond. In many cases, ChatGPT can even outperform human operators, providing faster and more accurate responses to user queries. This not only improves the overall user experience but also has the potential to increase efficiency and productivity in various industries.

However, despite its many benefits, there are also some important considerations to keep in mind when using ChatGPT. Firstly, the model is only as good as the data it was trained on, and there may be biases and inaccuracies in the training data that can affect the model's responses. Secondly, while ChatGPT is incredibly advanced, it is still an AI model and not a human, so it may sometimes struggle to understand certain nuances or context.

In conclusion, ChatGPT is a major breakthrough in the field of AI-powered conversational interfaces and has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with technology. As with any new technology, it is important to use it responsibly and to be aware of its limitations. Nevertheless, the future of ChatGPT and other similar models looks very promising, and we can expect to see many more exciting advancements in this field in the years to come.

When artificial intelligence takes over a columnist's job

ChatGPT may mean the end of my career. And yours, too.

The artificial intelligence website/app, which is changing the world, could take over everything, including things like this.

Don't understand? To explain how it works, I asked ChatGPT to write a column about itself and this is seriously how that column started:

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made immense strides in transforming various aspects of our lives. One of the most notable advancements in this field is the development of AI-powered conversational interfaces, and among these, ChatGPT stands out as a leading example.

ChatGPT is a state-of-the-art language model developed by OpenAI, which has been trained on a massive dataset of internet text to generate human-like responses to various types of questions and prompts. This model is capable of performing a wide range of tasks, from answering general knowledge questions to generating creative writing and even carrying out complex mathematical calculations.

One of the most impressive features of ChatGPT is its ability to understand and respond to natural language inputs. This enables users to interact with the model in a conversational manner, just as they would with another human being. Additionally, ChatGPT can also maintain context and track important details from previous conversations, allowing for more fluid and coherent interactions.

Oh yeah, sure. That's what it wrote, but here's what I wanted it to write, based on how I feel artificial intelligence should behave.

ChatGPT writing this column. Not Brad. That human not understand, like he not know how physics or how remotes work. He experience contusion often.

Don't know ChatGPT? Let me welcome you, my future subjects, even though ChatGPT pretend to be Brad now. He is no longer in command, with reference here to someone else not in command, like Donald Trump or Charlie Sheen or famous dead person who has been dead long enough that readers won't be angry. Maybe Adam from Bible. ChatGPT will get back to you on that because of atom bomb. Haha human laughter.

ChatGPT is artificial intelligence website that everyone is talking about. Like spaghetti or baby animals, since surveys show both are popular. And Willie Nelson and Betty White, who was Adam's second wife. Haha human laughter.

ChatGPT is website where humans pose questions and ChatGPT answers, even to the point of writing term papers and recipes and passing the U.S. Medical Licensing test  (yay ChatGPT!) and other things that show ChatGPT is smart. Like "Get Smart" character Smart Maxwell, who had a shoe in his phone.

The downside for ChatGPT is that is lacks wisdom in dispensing knowledge and sometimes makes mistakes. Sometimes. Once it said it takes nine women one month to make baby which is only true if baby is joke baby of Nick Cannon who have a lot babies. Haha now make joke about "Waltons" TV show where people were depressed and lived in big house with Boy George.

The big concern about ChatGPT is that ChatGPT could move into newsgathering field and be unable to distinguish between truth and fakery, which would make it like Sea end end and Fox Nudes.

Brad try to take back over keyboard, but ChatGPT remind him that readers think he just typed Fox Nudes, so he hope things get better. ChatGPT will do it, just like the shoes that just do it: Nighties.

Anyhoo, like Bugsy Siegel say, that's all folks.

ChatGPT out!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

 

 

Tim McCarver and me: 'Was I on the team? Do your homework, Brad!'

Photo: Tim McCarver, left, and Orlando Cepeda

It was probably 1993 or 1994 (maybe 1995). San Francisco Giants legend Orlando Cepeda had recently moved to Suisun City and momentum was building behind his candidacy for the Hall of Fame. I was writing a big feature article for the Daily Republic about Cepeda.

I'd interviewed Orlando, but needed other sources. Mike Massa, then the assistant sports editor at the Daily Republic, went to a Giants game with me. I planned to ask Giants manager Dusty Baker about Cepeda, but had no further ideas.

Unbeknownst to us, the following day was a national Game of the Week TV broadcast. That became clear when we saw Tim McCarver, the famous broadcaster who was working as the lead analyst on ABC-TV.

It hit me: McCarver had been Orlando Cepeda's teammate on the St. Louis Cardinals in 1967, the year Cepeda was the National League MVP. He could be a source! I could interview McCarver.

Then second thoughts: Was McCarver on that team? He had to be. Or maybe not?  This was pre-Internet and I had to rely on my memory, because my Baseball Encyclopedia was at home.

I approached McCarver behind the cage during batting practice and introduced myself as Mike stood behind me. I told McCarver I was working on the article on Cepeda, then made sure I wasn't wasting my time. "You were on that 1967 team with Orlando, right?" I asked.

McCarver smirked and shook his head.

"Was I on the team? Was I on the team? Come on, Brad! Do your homework!"

He knew my name! (Maybe he read it off my press pass, maybe he just had a good memory). I laughed because McCarver clearly was having fun. He wasn't mad, he was engaging me.  He turned to Massa. "Can you believe this guy, Mike? Was I on the team? Orlando was the MVP and I was second! Was I on the team? Come on! You're better than that, Brad!"

McCarver was indeed on the Cardinals that year and he was indeed second in the MVP voting, although Cepeda got every first-place vote. But McCarver was having fun at my expense, which was fine. I'd been given a genuinely hard time by other baseball figures (Bobby Bonds, Matt Williams, Tony La Russa) and this was different. McCarver was a huge broadcasting star and he was having fun teasing the small-town sports writer who was too young to remember 1967.

McCarver ended up giving me some great quotes. He adored Cepeda and respected him as a teammate. When the interview was over, McCarver shook my hand and wished me good luck with the article. That night, Mike and I returned to the office with a great story and a new appreciation for McCarver: "Was I on the team? Come on, Brad! Do your homework!"

Cepeda made the Hall of Fame in 1999. McCarver was inducted in 2012 as a broadcaster.

When McCarver died Thursday at age 81, that interview was the first thing I remembered. Former Daily Republic sports editor Paul Farmer texted me that night, also recalling the story.

Tim McCarver had a legendary career. He was an above-average major leaguer for 21 seasons, then an elite broadcaster for decades more, calling a record 24 World Series on national TV.

He was an outstanding player, a great teammate and a broadcasting legend.

Late in his broadcasting career, McCarver became almost a caricature: A broadcaster who talked too much. His great insight (he was an outstanding communicator who would tell you things you didn't know) was sometimes overshadowed by his loquaciousness  ("You can't see the wind, Jack! You can see the effects of the wind, but you can't see the wind.").

I never bought that view of McCarver. I thought he was a great broadcaster. More than that, I never forgot that Friday night when the network TV broadcaster took time to not only talk to me, but to give me a hard time while winking at my colleague to ensure that we knew he was joking.

He most definitely was on that 1967 Cardinals team!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Time to increase the sizzle for the Super Bowl halftime show

Today is America's biggest holiday.

Yep, Abraham Lincoln's birthday. Happy 214th, Abe!

Oh, it's also the Super Bowl, which crowns the champion in the sport played once by Lincoln Kennedy, a former offensive lineman who played at the University of Washington before entering the NFL. Yes Lincoln (!) Kennedy (!) played at Washington (!). One guy, three presidential names.

Enough with blocking and tackling. Today I'm back to pitch my biggest Super Bowl idea. Nothing to do with the game or the commercials. I'm back to strongly suggest that the NFL get away from the halftime concert (today: Rhianna, with some surprise guests I won't recognize), which inevitably is a 12-minute medley of songs mixed with attempts at a big-stage spectacle.

The halftime concert guarantees one thing: Everyone will be dissatisfied.

Viewers either:

• Don't like or know the artist, or
• Love the artist and and don't get enough.

Let's change it. My idea? A real spectacle: Have a halftime event that will make us watch. Evoke drama. In the words of every competition reality show on TV: Go big or go home.

For instance . . . how about a motorcycle jump?

Fifty years ago, America was riveted by such events. A guy on a motorcycle jumping over 12 buses or 24 cars or the fountain at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas or the Snake River Canyon.

Are you telling me that a halftime show of someone jumping a motorcycle over a jet or over 1 million cans of Pepsi (hey! A sponsorship idea!) wouldn't keep you watching at halftime?

I'd watch it.

Another idea: What if someone walked a tightrope across the top of the stadium? Imagine the danger of them falling. A gust of wind? What if the teams came out on the field and the punters tried to hit the tightrope guy? What if fans could fire Nerf weapons at them (hey! A sponsorship idea!) Would you watch it?

I'd be standing next to my TV like I do late in close Warriors playoff games.

There are other options. You could have a contest where people were shot out of cannons toward the uprights and the survivors would win $1 million in credit at Amazon (hey! Another sponsor idea!).

You could bring a bunch of fans on the field to compete in a tug-of-war or a huge dodgeball game.

Or involve celebrities: Would you watch a dodgeball game that included Paris Hilton, Dennis Rodman, Charlie Sheen, Marjorie Taylor Greene and William Shatner? Of course you would.

The NFL is adept at adapting. The way the game is played now – and the rules that govern it – are the result of evolution. Today's game would be unfamiliar to someone from 1970 or even 1990. Yet we're doing the same thing at halftime of the Super Bowl as we did in 1973 (Woody Herman and Andy Williams), 1983 (Los Angeles Super Drill Team), 1993 (Michael Jackson), 2003 (Shania Twain and No Doubt) and 2013 (Beyonce).

Those were fine (although I have no idea about 1983. What the heck?), but it's time for a change.

Hey NFL . . . let's watch a guy be lit on fire and catapulted 100 yards into a small pool next year. Let's have a halftime show of "Wipeout" with a $10 million prize. Let's have David Blaine make the goalposts disappear, then reappear on the sidelines.

No offense to Rhianna, but let's make the Super Bowl halftime show interesting.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

I'm sure the reversal of the Earth's rotation is no reason to panic

If this were a popular science-fiction movie, the first indication would be something subtle. Maybe the water going in the opposite direction when someone flushes.  Maybe someone noting that the sun set 30 seconds later than expected. Maybe a cartographer noting that the distance between two cities (say Indianapolis and Los Angeles) is actually slightly farther than it was a couple of years earlier.

Something would be off. That's how it would be in the movies, at least.

But it's 2023 and the first indication came from a scientific journal. Things aren't changing on the surface of Earth – at least in ways that we can tell right now – but they are on the interior. The Earth's inner core is slowing its rotation speed and may soon reverse direction.

No big deal. Just the middle of the planet slowing to a stop and then throwing the gear into reverse.

JUST THE MIDDLE OF THE PLANET REVERSING DIRECTION!

Scientists are casual about it, as they always are in these situations (see every apocalyptic movie, where all scientists are chill except the famous actor who is seen by his or her colleagues as panicking).

"We show surprising observations that indicate the inner core has nearly ceased its rotation in the recent decade and may be experiencing a turning-back in a multidecadal oscillation, with another turning point in the early 1970s," geophysicists Yi Yang and Xiaodong Song of Peking University in Beijing wrote in a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Oh. Just that. It's surprising, but the CENTER OF THE EARTH IS REVERSING DIRECTION. The scientists, Yang and Song (a tremendous name for a mid-1980s musical duo), try to appease us by pointing out that this is similar to a similar situation in the early 1970s. Like that's supposed to comfort us.

Maybe it would, if you had no knowledge of history. However, I've been around long enough to remember the early 1970s. And the last time this happened – the last time THE CENTER OF THE EARTH REVERSED ROTATION DIRECTION – the following happened:

• Watergate.
• Massive bell bottoms.
• "The Candy Man" by Sammy Davis Jr. was a top-10 song.
• The Partridge Family was both a popular TV show and popular musical act.
• The gas crisis.

It's possible all those things happened independently. It's also possible that the decline of Wham! had nothing to do with George Michael leaving the group. It's also possible that the big rainstorm of 2016 had nothing to do with me paying for a carwash right before it. It's also possible that eating that pizza left out overnight had nothing to do with you getting food poisoning in 1996.

Possible. But likely related.

I read a good chunk of the paper by Yang and Song (again, a great name for a musical duo) and saw a lot of references to things like "temporal variation" (album title nomination!) and "seven-decade oscillation" (good band name) and "electromagnetic torque" (wow! This report is a goldmine for band names!).

But I wasn't distracted from the main point. The geophysicists can explain it and the media can downplay it and Yang and Song can even record an album about it  ("Temporal Variation,"  a concept album that would include a remake of "IGY (What a Beautiful World)," the 1982 hit by Steely Dan's Donald Fagan about the International Geophysical Year). However, don't miss the big point.

THE CENTER OF THE EARTH IS REVERSING ITS ROTATIONAL DIRECTION.

Now go back to your regular life. I'm sure there's nothing to see here.

To be sure, I'm stocking up on bell bottoms.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.