2023-06-09 00:00:05
I’ve been watching the frenzy over ChatGPT and AI Generative as the latest technology cycle to completely transform society. Not that it won’t change, as it will facilitate many jobs and impact many areas, such as Education, Journalism, Law, Software Development, among others.
Texts are being prepared almost instantly, with different tones of communication and aimed at different audiences and age groups. And how about changing the language almost instantly, creating a literary work or music with four chords and Rock characteristics? Well, this future could just be the beginning.
I remember the early 90s, when such a “prompt” promoted the greatest technological innovations and inspirations. This “prompt” was a black interface on a personal computer (PC) that waited for the user to type the texts known by the PC to execute commands requested by the person and then displayed information on the “tube television” screen. Wow! I had just taken a typing course at the age of 13, used to seeing texts pressed on A4 sheets, it was really something frightening.The typing ended, as well as several other professions.
I embarked on the new wave of computing and soon started writing my first codes, learning from books, in Basic, then Visual Basic, Delphi and, already in college, C, C++ and professionally Java, .NET and all the legacy that emerged.
In the mid-2000s, there was also the analogous feeling of a total transformation of society: the Web would do away with brick-and-mortar establishments, salespeople would no longer exist, and the commercially oriented real estate market would collapse. A few years later, with cell phones and GSM network connectivity at a telecom company in Minas Gerais, I coded for the first SIMCARD microbrowsers in WML.
Soon, it opened the door to a new future with clicks, purchases of monophonic and polyphonic tones and exchanges of short snippets of text sent from a distance, regardless of where you were, as long as there was a cell phone signal. Then, one of the most brilliant guys of the century, inaugurates the era of smartphones, the iPhone. The game has changed again. Now, the agility in the actions, the beauty of the content and the good user experience dictate the moment and the market speeds up for the construction of APPs.
Even today, APPs multiply, with a lot of content and intelligent algorithms embedded, bringing information based on user actions and preferences and making the market increasingly dynamic. Generations of people are being born with the new Touch experience, unlike the one I was born into: we learn about electricity and its potential by putting our little fingers in the sockets at home (who never?). Yes, the shift from physical to digital experience takes place!
And now, we have ChatGPT (AI Generative). Really, something impactful and frightening, but perhaps less surprising than when I first saw the letters typed on a keyboard appearing on the TV screen. However, it is more exciting than a Smartphone performing banking functions, receiving WhatsApp, approaching family groups and following the company’s production dashboards or stock market prices, since, simplifying, it was the transfer of potentially existing solutions to a personal computer (PC) to the mobile device.
It is necessary to take into account that ChatGPT is still in prompt: you insert the text and enjoy the whole equation of contents captured and processed with a humanoid response (it is not humanized, there are no feelings) aggregated, be they texts, images or sounds . Was it just another “prompt”, or was it already the last stage of a new digital age? The “prompt” that we know from Microsoft DOS, evolved into a graphical environment (Windows 3.1) into an operating system. Successively, intelligence was added to the computer, such as voice communication and commands captured by cameras. All this being processed as a whole, generating new possibilities for solutions and answers.
However, is AI and AI Generative still just getting started, as we have all these other possibilities and with IoTs? Will this all still be aggregated, incremented and connected? Obviously yes, but the point is that there is still a lot to happen, and I see this as a new tool for us to add to our toolbox. Oh, and will programming codes be built from questions? While repetitive commands and instructions, yes will undergo changes. For example, CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) is long gone, and the complexity of software development is reaching a new height. Perhaps we will have the opportunity to complement this whole new trend!
In summary, while the future is here and AI Generative like ChatGPT is both impactful and frightening, it still represents only one step in the ongoing process of digital evolution. Just like in the past, when we witness revolutionary technological advances, we should see this new technology as a valuable addition to our skills and knowledge, providing new opportunities and challenges to explore. This future is in constant motion, and we are just at the beginning of a journey filled with exciting possibilities.
By: Árley Duque, With 25 years of experience in technology, he is a specialist in Software Engineering, Project Management and Corporate Architecture, with extensive experience in Agility and IT service management. He led Digital Transformation and Innovation programs in large companies.
#future #arrived #present
