[MZ Column] The Emergence of ChatGPT and Writing in the AI Era

[Asia Economy] The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) chatGPT is spreading controversy, tension, and concern among writers and professionals engaged in intellectual activities. chatGPT is a conversational service. It is a ‘conversational search’ and ‘writing’ AI that writes whatever you ask in text form.

chatGPT accurately understands users' questions and responds with very smooth sentences. For example, if you ask, "Tell me about art from the Greek era," it provides quite accurate knowledge. It can answer almost any question, from everyday problems like cooking or cleaning methods to specialized knowledge.

It not only provides simple information or knowledge but also ideas. If you say, "Create a mystery novel plot about an American living in Seoul," it immediately generates a plot. The writer just needs to add flesh to the story and write it. If a professor inputs a topic assigned as homework at university, chatGPT quickly writes an essay.

A novelist can write novels because they know many other stories beforehand. Combining and recreating those stories in their own way is also ‘creation.’ However, if AI has learned far more stories than human novelists and can combine a much wider variety of stories, it is not surprising that it can quickly write even newer stories. It will not be a distant future when AI provides consultations on specialized knowledge such as law or medicine or combines research results from existing papers to produce new research findings. Some scholars may already be referencing or using it. For example, if you input "Give me a new research topic on Drosophila studies," numerous new topics appear, including "The role of gut microbiota on the lifespan and health of Drosophila." Finding new research topics like this could be possible.

Existing machines and robots have replaced many tasks that human bodies had to perform. As AI continues to develop, it is obvious that it will replace many intellectual activities previously done by humans. The emergence of chatGPT shows that such a change may come much faster than expected. It is already quite possible to write blog posts or simple articles using chatGPT.

Personally, as a professional dealing with legal knowledge and a writer of columns and essays, I feel somewhat tense about the emergence of such AI. While it is possible to work more efficiently and write using AI, it also makes me reflect on the human domains that AI cannot replace.

As a lawyer, I think AI’s involvement will become more difficult as specific cases become more complex. In such cases, the lawyer’s ability might be to organize complex matters, extract the core, and identify legal issues. When searching for laws or precedents as answers to those questions, AI’s help can be utilized.

As a writer, the part that is difficult to replace is to sincerely and deeply unfold ‘my story.’ Unless AI knows every move and action of mine, it is hard for it to express the events or feelings of the day I have lived. Even in the AI era, the existence of ‘me’ and ‘my story’ will remain until the end.

The more AI develops, the more we must fiercely seek our roles and domains in greater detail. Long ago, humanity lived in a ‘wild’ environment; then we came to live in ‘civilization and cities,’ and now we live in an environment called ‘AI.’

Jung Ji-woo, Cultural Critic