[Insight & Opinion] The Advent of Chat-Based AI... The Era of Human-AI Coexistence Has Arrived

[Asia Economy] A new era is quietly unfolding. Recently, the chat-based artificial intelligence (AI) service called ‘ChatGPT,’ provided by OpenAI, has become a hot topic. While there have been various AI services, ChatGPT is characterized by its ability to understand human questions and directly provide documents or outputs that appear to be written by humans through conversation. Unlike traditional search engines that present documents or sites related to keywords entered, ChatGPT’s biggest distinction is that it creates and provides a new document as an answer to the user’s question. What is astonishing is that, beyond simply delivering answers in document form, it can also write programming code as requested by users or produce literary works with artistic expression effortlessly. Although it is somewhat awkward in Korean, when conversing in English, it feels as if you are discussing a topic with a human and solving problems together.

The limitations of ChatGPT are also clear. With continued use, it becomes easy to recognize the lack of the latest information and data, and there is a sense that it sometimes provides incorrect content in a plausible manner. Some argue that it is at a stage similar to natural language processing that emerged during the development of past search engines and that it is difficult to see it as a leap forward. It also shows considerable weakness in specific fields such as classical music and gives the impression of having internal control mechanisms regarding sensitive topics. However, ChatGPT clearly understands its limitations and advises that if you want to know more accurately, it is better to look up additional information or verify sources yourself, which is a distinct difference.

ChatGPT is a service based on the GPT model, which generates human-like text through deep learning using 175 billion parameters without separate human-led training. OpenAI, the company providing this service, was founded in December 2015 by Sam Altman and Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla. The company is developing GPT-4, which uses 100 trillion parameters and is far more advanced than the current GPT-3 level. Once practical, this is expected to overcome many of the aforementioned limitations and awkwardness.

AI like ChatGPT does not entirely replace human work by itself. However, it clearly serves as a tool that reduces many repetitive and time-consuming tasks. A significant portion of the time we spend on daily tasks involves searching for and organizing existing cases and information. When you start a conversation about something you are curious about and discuss where to begin and what to consider, productivity can rapidly increase.

Historically, technology itself does not fundamentally solve the problems society faces or naturally advance society. We know from history that the role of technology greatly depends on how people accept and utilize it. Soon, our task will be to consider how to utilize AI that freely uses human language. We must think about how AI and robots can coexist with humans rather than being adversaries. For us, facing labor shortages due to population decline and aging, this consideration is not optional but essential and an urgent task.

Choi Jun-young, Specialist, Law Firm Yulchon

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.