Like everyone else in the tech world, I’ve been watching the sensation over OpenAI’s new chatbot, ChatGPT. I’ve talked to a few chatbots before and a couple were impressive but the limitations were always obvious pretty quickly. When I was finally able to get online with ChatGPT, I was floored at the difference between it and previous efforts.
There’s been a lot of talk about the service’s ability to create new works, including computer code and poetry. I did ask it a programming question at one point and was impressed with ChatGPT’s ability to write an entire C# module in a few seconds. Videos are already popping up on YouTube from people claiming to have created entire websites or programs using the chatbot. Programming influencers are recommending its use to boost productivity. I can see where It might be a useful tool for some of the basic programming tasks that developers face but it’s good enough that I’m also wary of it being used as a crutch.
Years ago, when I was making do with the limited computer equipment that I could afford, I never dreamed that I would one day be able to login to a website, plug in a few specs about the machine I wanted and then, a few minutes later, log into that machine remotely and run whatever programs I needed to. Yet, that’s exactly what today’s cloud computing resources enable me to do.