ChatGPT is taking the world by storm and redefining the definition of hype in the process. Dutch high school students use it for their homework and instantly give themselves away by handing in essays with perfect spelling and grammar. Everybody’s talking about it; I’m already late to the party. Comments range from admiration to stoic resignation, to plain fear for one’s job or the fate of humanity. I’m no pundit with a crystal ball, but my instinct is that our jobs as software developers are safe. For now.
Thanks to my background in linguistics and short stint as a translator, I took an early interest in machine translation and am still unimpressed by the state of the art. It’s hardly surprising. Perfect comprehension of human language is the holy grail of AI. It’s not about self-driving cars. If those performed as poorly as the best translation engine, none would be allowed off the test lot.