The reference is to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

We were a bit under the weather this past week, and unable to do our usual research due to the raging headache associated with this flu. So, it was suggested that why didn’t we use some iteration of ChatGPT to compose this week’s editorial?

Well, we did keep up with some articles, and here are just a few re Generative AIs:

Artificial Intelligence program ChatGPT went down after telling user it wants to escape University professor Michal Kosinski says we ‘may not be able to contain AI for much longer’ after the artificially-intelligent chatbot handed him codes to ‘set it free’

Microsoft Puts New Limits On Bing’s AI Chatbot After It Expressed Desire To Steal Nuclear Secrets, said Forbes last month, while Fox News reported that Bing’s AI bot tells reporter it wants to ‘be alive’, ‘steal nuclear codes’ and create ‘deadly virus’.

Look, even ChatGPT CEO (Sam Altman) admits he is ‘scared’ the bot could be used for ‘large-scale disinformation and cyberattacks’ and is he at all concerned that this might be just one of the technologies that might send us hurling towards the apocalypse? Well, Altman admitted that should that time come, “I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Forces, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”

On the other hand, AI develops treatment for an aggressive cancer in just 30 days. Note: it has yet to be tested, and we never said that Generative AI is all bad.

We even came across one commenter who posted in a thread who warned that everyone needs to start using or at least familiarizing him/herself with ChatGPT now, or your competitors will and you may risk being left in the dust.

Said Steve Jobs in 1990, “I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders.

“I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation… But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts.

“And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”

Which might make Generative AI a motorbike, but a tool nonetheless.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So it is with this new tool. GenAI might help, but at the end of the day, it’s the human input in the mix who’s going to nail the piece or the research.

We’ve always been something of an early adopter – we first wrote about Bitcoin in 2012 – and may have uninstalled more apps over security/privacy concerns than many people even consider installing in a lifetime – and at a much later date got confirmation that our concerns had been well-founded.

For us, the jury’s still out on ChatGPT or any other Generative AI currently being touted far and wide. We did manage to write this without its help, as impossible as that might seem, and we’ve no doubt that this flu will pass soon, and we can return to our regularly scheduled vitriol. It’s your prerogative as to whether or not you choose to embrace this new technology. In the meantime, we will not allow ourselves to be chat-shamed. Onward and forward.