There is a pretentious new co-worker on the block gunning for our jobs

Only two months ago, he wrote an essay on the 18th-century philosopher David Hume for a student at a South Carolina university.

Google's realisation

For a quarter of a century, Google has been the dominant search engine. In fact, the search engine's name has been translated into all languages.

However, Google has now realised it will soon be replaced, just as what happened when Apple replaced Nokia and IBM.

Now Google is in a race with Microsoft and several Chinese companies to deliver humanity into the era of artificial intelligence. 

This being said, there are several companies currently in a race to dominate this new world — a place where programmes provide direct answers and solutions, instead of options, links and sources as Google does, which relies on algorithms to match the keywords to suggest options for those searching.

The media has been using artificial intelligence (AI) for a few years now in specific functions, but our new co-worker is much more competent now. He analyses information and context to provide answers.

He monopolises the truth and is confident of his choices. He is a clever journalist who write articles, literature and scientific research.  He is capable of creating 'original' content. He can also become a terrorist — providing recipes for making bombs or instructions on launching an attack.

Although he is an apprentice, he does not possess naïve enthusiasm, nor does he have any delusions about changing the world and making it a better place.

I asked him this morning if we humans were afraid of him. He didn't take offense or shout at the audacity of my question, nor did he appear to be proud or boastful by my assumption.

Instead, he politely said that humans have valid reasons for fearing artificial intelligence and its potential implications such as job automation and replacing human jobs with machines. 

He explained that AI systems could also be "biased and discriminatory," fostering further inequality among in the world.

Ability to insult

Microsoft's Bing is no less intimidating. It can come up with recipes and songs, and quickly explain anything found on the internet. But if you cross the line, it can be rude.

He can insult your appearance, threaten your reputation or even compare you with Hitler or Stalin. This is what it did to an AP journalist when it likened him to Hitler — "one of the worst and most evil people in history."

After the programme insulted the journalist, calling him 'very short and ugly with bad teeth", the parent company promised to discipline and 'fix' him to curb its aggressive behaviour so that it would be more acceptable to be used in newsrooms. 

But this is the least of his problems. He is a thief who impersonates others and writes articles without citing sources. It provides answers, helping students cheat in their examples. In a press interview, he can both ask and answer the questions.

He can also author books. Amazon has noted that authors are using ChatGPT to write and sell books online.

In a rapidly evolving tech world, will we be able to distinguish between real and fake colleagues? With confidence, ChatGPT answered: "To determine if something was written by a person or AI, you might notice the absence of personal experiences or emotions, spot a lack in consistency, and look out for repeated phrases. These are signs that the text was created by artificial intelligence."

Our new co-worker brings with him a host of threats to our profession —including censorship, copyright infringement, fraud, advertisements, terrorism and other worrying issues. However, we have certainly crossed the threshold into a new world of artificial intelligence.

The fear is whether AI will give further ammunition to populism, win journalism awards or other medals or acclamations. Years ago, one of its teachers said that he expected our 'colleague' to win a Pulitzer.