Anyone can ask ChatGPT to answer a question or perform a task. But the popular chatbot is particularly useful for workers in three specific industries, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“Coding is probably the single area from a productivity gain we’re most excited about today. It’s massively deployed and at scaled usage, at this point,” Altman said during a recent episode of “Unconfuse Me,” a podcast hosted by Bill Gates. “Healthcare and education are two things that are coming up that curve that we’re very excited about, too.”
Altman, whose company makes ChatGPT, made a point of noting that today’s AI systems “certainly can’t do [those] jobs” for you. But in those three fields, workers might benefit from using the chatbot as a productivity tool, he said.
Here’s how.
Coding
ChatGPT can help programmers finish their work as much as three times faster than usual, Altman said. The system can assist in tasks like reviewing written code for mistakes, writing test cases, answering a programmer’s questions and even generating new code completely on its own, he added.
The key word is “assist.” GPT-4, which OpenAI released last year, provides the wrong answer to programming questions nearly half of the time, according to a 2023 study from researchers at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley.
Coders who use ChatGPT to assist their work should proceed with caution and double-check everything the chatbot says — a process that may be faster than performing those tasks manually.
The goal isn’t just to help coders complete more work in less time, Altman said: Such a productivity shift can, and should, give people more free time to think outside of the box.
“They can — at that higher level of abstraction, using more of their brainpower — they can now think of totally different things,” he said. “It’s like [how] going from punch cards to higher level languages didn’t just let us program a little faster, it let us do these qualitatively new things.”
Education
Currently, AI systems can help teachers design a curriculum, or personalized lesson plans for specific students. They can also save teachers time by performing various administrative tasks for them, like tracking attendance or sending automated assignment reminders.
It may also be useful for learning new languages: Educational tech companies like Duolingo have, somewhat controversially, reportedly started cutting workers while relying more on AI.
Gates has also touted ChatGPT’s ability to power tutoring programs, in the hopes of expanding access to personalized tutors for students in remote and underserved communities. Last year, he predicted that people would be “stunned” by how much AI tutors could soon help improve students’ reading and writing skills.
“The AIs will get to that ability, to be as good a tutor as any human ever could,” Gates said in a keynote talk at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego last April.
Some educators have worried that tools like ChatGPT could make it easier for students to cheat on assignments. Research hasn’t shown an uptick in cheating so far — but the mistakes it can make mean that parents and teachers should remind students to never rely solely on AI, Barnard College psychologist Dr. Tovah Klein told CNBC Make It last year.
Healthcare
OpenAI’s chatbot has already passed the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam, though experts caution that the system’s propensity for errors makes it unlikely to be trusted by most patients for the foreseeable future.
But AI tools can benefit doctors by serving as a digital assistant to help with time-consuming administrative tasks like insurance paperwork, American Medical Association president Jesse Ehrenfeld said last year.
Such tools can analyze research and summarize patients’ medical histories, the AMA separately noted last year. And they can save time and educate medical patients by answering many of their most frequently-asked questions, research shows.
Beyond your doctor’s office, some pharmaceutical companies are using ChatGPT to automate parts of the processes for discovering and researching new drugs, Gates wrote in a 2023 blog post.
“One of the Gates Foundation’s priorities in AI is to make sure these tools are used for the health problems that affect the poorest people in the world, including AIDS, [tuberculosis], and malaria,” he wrote.
Altman echoed that excitement on Gates’ podcast, noting that the technology is only in its infancy.
“The stuff that we’re seeing now is very exciting and wonderful, but I think it’s worth always putting it in context of this technology that, at least for the next five or ten years, will be on a very steep improvement curve,” Altman said. “These are the stupidest the models will ever be.”
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OpenAI 首席执行官萨姆·阿尔特曼表示，任何人都可以要求 ChatGPT 回答问题或执行任务。但据他称，这款流行的聊天机器人对三个特定行业的从业者特别有用。
阿尔特曼在比尔·盖茨主持的播客“Unconfuse Me”的最近一期节目中表示：“从生产力增长的角度来看，编码可能是我们今天最兴奋的单一领域。它已大规模部署，并且在这一点上已达到规模化使用。”“医疗保健和教育是我们也非常兴奋的两个正在兴起的事物。”
阿尔特曼的公司制造了 ChatGPT，他特别指出，当今的人工智能系统“当然无法为你做[那些]工作”。但他说，在这三个领域，从业者可能会受益于将聊天机器人用作生产力工具。
方法如下。
编码
阿尔特曼表示，ChatGPT 可以帮助程序员以通常速度的三倍完成工作。他补充说，该系统可以帮助执行诸如检查书面代码中的错误、编写测试用例、回答程序员的问题，甚至完全自行生成新代码等任务。
关键词是“帮助”。根据斯坦福大学和加州大学伯克利分校研究人员 2023 年的一项研究，OpenAI 去年发布的 GPT-4 在近一半的时间里对编程问题给出了错误的答案。
使用 ChatGPT 帮助自己工作的人员应谨慎行事，并仔细检查聊天机器人所说的每一句话——此过程可能比手动执行这些任务更快。
阿尔特曼表示，目标不仅仅是帮助编码员在更短的时间内完成更多工作：这种生产力的转变可以而且应该让人们有更多空闲时间来跳出固有思维模式。
他说：“在更高的抽象层次上，他们可以使用更多脑力——他们现在可以想到完全不同的事情。”“这就像从穿孔卡到高级语言的转变，它不仅让我们可以更快地编程，还让我们可以做这些质量上全新的事情。”
教育
目前，人工智能系统可以帮助教师设计课程，或为特定学生制定个性化课程计划。它们还可以通过为教师执行各种管理任务（例如跟踪出勤或发送自动作业提醒）来节省教师的时间。
它可能也有助于学习新语言：据报道，像 Duolingo 这样的教育科技公司在一定程度上引起了争议，它们开始裁员，同时更多地依赖人工智能。
盖茨还大力宣传了 ChatGPT 为辅导计划提供动力的能力，希望为偏远和服务欠缺社区的学生扩大获得个性化辅导的机会。去年，他预测人们会“惊叹”于人工智能辅导员很快就能在多大程度上帮助学生提高阅读和写作能力。
盖茨去年 4 月在圣地亚哥举行的 ASU+GSV 峰会上发表主题演讲时说：“人工智能将获得这种能力，成为与人类一样优秀的家教。”
一些教育工作者担心，像 ChatGPT 这样的工具可能会让学生更容易在作业中作弊。巴纳德学院心理学家托瓦·克莱因博士去年告诉 CNBC Make It，研究到目前为止尚未显示出作弊行为有所增加——但它可能犯的错误意味着父母和教师应该提醒学生切勿仅仅依赖人工智能。
医疗保健
OpenAI 的聊天机器人已经通过了美国执业医师资格考试，尽管专家警告说，该系统容易出错，因此在可预见的未来不太可能被大多数患者信任。
去年，美国医学会主席杰西·埃伦菲尔德表示，人工智能工具可以作为数字助理，帮助医生处理保险文书工作等耗时的行政任务，从而使医生受益。
美国医学会去年单独指出，此类工具可以分析研究并总结患者的病史。研究表明，它们还可以通过回答许多最常问的问题来节省时间并教育患者。
盖茨在 2023 年的一篇博文中写道，除了医生的办公室外，一些制药公司正在使用 ChatGPT 自动化部分流程，以发现和研究新药。
他写道：“盖茨基金会的人工智能优先事项之一是确保将这些工具用于影响世界上最贫困人群的健康问题，包括艾滋病、[结核病]和疟疾。”
奥特曼在盖茨的播客中对此表示赞同，并指出这项技术还处于起步阶段。
奥特曼说：“我们现在看到的东西非常令人兴奋和美妙，但我认为值得始终将其置于这项技术的背景下，至少在未来五到十年内，它将处于非常陡峭的改进曲线中。”“这些模型将永远是最愚蠢的。”
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