Preparing for the World of A.I. and ChatGPT

We live in unsettling times. I assume you have heard of the latest thing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) called ChatGPT. AI and ChatGPT are going to change your world. It will slowly creep up, then it will seem like an overwhelming wave of change that is sudden, profound, and will affect everyone’s world in ways we can’t even imagine. We are experiencing exponential change…and it’s going to be a wild ride.

To better illustrate how exponential change happens, here’s a thought experiment for you. Imagine you are at the top bleacher of a huge football stadium. A man takes a dropper of water and puts a single drop of water on the 50-yard line. A minute later he puts two drops on the field. A minute later, 4 drops; a minute later 8 drops. How long would it take for the man sitting on the top bleacher of the huge stadium to be literally underwater? What’s your best guess? Take a moment to actually guess…

…The answer is forty-three minutes. At thirty minutes, the man sitting on the top bleacher still might not be able to see there is water on the field. Thirteen minutes later, the stadium would have the equivalent of one million Olympic size swimming pools in it — and he’d be underwater. Thus is the nature of exponential change, and that is what we’re starting to experience. AI and ChatGPT are currently analogous to the man in the stadium at minute 30. We see there may be…