Jackson is 28 years old and is a genius of science and technology. Born in the United States, he lived and completed his non-university studies in Barcelona. He spent his childhood and adolescence in an American school, where he also learned Spanish and Catalan. One course he stopped going to math class because he was bored –you know, there are teachers and teachers–, but he had no problem passing them easily. He was capable of repairing his friends’ computers, but he was getting in the way of Spanish. He was 14 years old when he made the decision to forget about him. He didn’t want to study or learn it. The machines will translate for me, he argued. Then he entered the prestigious Stanford University and I lost track of him.
Jackson must be around microchips today. He was endearing and very visionary for his age; he lived in the future. So it shouldn’t surprise you at all how quickly artificial intelligence is taking hold among us, be it in the field of health, automotive or gastronomy, be it called Siri, Home or Echo, the personal assistants of Apple, Google and Amazon. The last to arrive has been the one who has made the most noise: ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence bot capable, among other things, of answering complex questions, passing exams without problems, writing thoughtful reports and who knows if even speeches by presidents of the Government . And all without you being able to realize that a machine has done it.
ChatGPT is still a baby that will grow up and, like everything in artificial intelligence, it is not by itself good or bad. But there is something we do know: that not knowing, as my good friend Francisco says, is more bad than good. And not knowing if a literary creation, a business or political decision is human or from an artificial intelligence bot may be bad. Artificial intelligence is going to change value chains, the labor market, social structures and our lives. For this reason we must know that it will do so by human decision.
Jackson knew that a machine was going to speak Spanish for him. And his interlocutor, too.
