Time Person of the Year 2023

In My Humble Opinion
81

I very much disagree. AI, especially Chat GPT, reminds me much more of when the IPhone was launched: unlike the Metaverse or NFTs, I know so many non-tech people who have just integrated ChatGPT into their daily lives. They run routine correspondence through it, generate whatever TPS reports, ask it things they used to Google. Hell, I use it: it’s super useful for a million little applications where 90% as good is good enough.

This non-techie adoption is what tells me it’s here to stay, in a profound way.

82

Or e-commerce in 2000. Oh, wait … that did turn out to be kinda big after all.

83

I can see AI being picked. I don’t think they’ll touch anything related to Israel/Hamas/Gaza as they’ll get a week of protests and won’t really sell magazines.

‘Ai is coming for your job!!’ has been a guarantee of clicks all year long, the bizarre corporate struggle at open AI and the writer’s strike as mentioned above.

I’d be sticking by my original choice of Taylor Swift had Time not put out the special Taylor magazine recently.

84

Even if they hadn’t published the special Taylor Swift issue, I really don’t see how she qualifies.

85

Don’t spend much time around teenagers, do you? Apparently the Eras Tour is the Biggest Thing Ever.

86

Time’s website says the criterion is “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year.” So, yes, I’m far from my teenage years, but I still don’t see how she would qualify.

87

One person basically having a positive $5 Billion impact on just the US economy isn’t to be sneezed at.

88

It’s going to end up being Elon Musk, isn’t it? :very sad face:

89

The annual GDP of the US is something like $26 trillion, so yes, being responsible for “$4.6 billion in consumer spending” is actually something to sneeze at.

90

By one person’s activities? Sure, OK…

91

Time has announced its “shortlist” of nine finalists - the winner will be announced Wednesday morning:

Sam Altman
Barbie
King Charles III
Jerome Powell
Vladimir Putin
SAG/AFTRA & WGA
Taylor Swift
The Trump Prosecutors
Xi Jinping

I am more than a little surprised nobody from the Israel/Palestine conflict is on the list. Putin being there is also a surprise; it smacks of Ayatollah Khomeini winning in 1979 - the backlash if he was named would be too great.
Of the nine, my choice is SAG/AFTRA & WGA, which also ties into the whole AI thing, since that was one of the things they were striking about.

92

Don’t see why they don’t just combine Sam Altman with SAG and make it THE YEAR OF A.I.

93

Because AI right now is nothing more than market hype generated by techbros who are looking to sell their startup and cash in before the bubble bursts. I haven’t seen an effective use case for making AI profitable or useful at this point, especially considering that AI-generated works are uncopyrightable.

94

Brian

95

Every student has.

96

Has every student figured out how to get around the fact that works generated by AI are ineligible for copyright?

97

What does a student care about copyright when his AI generated paper satisfied their teacher/prof and they got a good grade? How much regular student papers, let alone works by high schoolers ever come up again or even get published?

98

Any professor that can’t recognize that a paper was begat by a chatbot with a search engine stapled to if probably isn’t worth the cost of tuition to attend their class. I haven’t seen anything “written” by AI that wasn’t the literary equivalent of the uncanny valley.

I’ll be impressed with artificlal “intelligence” when they create one that actually understands the ones and zeroes it’s spitting out.

99

I think you are wildly underestimating how much people hate writing–and how time consuming it is. ChatGPT works for things like

Write me an email setting up meeting. Suzie Smith, John Jones and Frank Black thursday room 45 remind bring their quarterly sales figures and expect to report out no breakfast provided but coffee yes.

This is what you get back, totally unedited:

Subject: Quarterly Sales Meeting on Thursday - Reminder to Bring Figures

Dear Suzie Smith, John Jones, and Frank Black,

I hope this email finds you well. We are scheduled to have our quarterly sales meeting this Thursday in Room 45. I wanted to send a quick reminder to ensure that we are all prepared for a productive discussion.

Date: Thursday
Time: [Insert Meeting Time]
Location: Room 45

Please be sure to bring your quarterly sales figures as we will be going over the performance and discussing our strategies moving forward. Each of your insights is crucial to the success of our team, and your preparedness will contribute significantly to the efficiency of our meeting.

Please plan to report out on any notable achievements, challenges, and proposed solutions for the upcoming quarter.

While breakfast will not be provided, there will be coffee available for those who need their caffeine fix.

Thank you for your commitment to the success of our team. Looking forward to a fruitful discussion.

Best regards,

[Your Name]
[Your Position]

For people who are awkward writers, that’s literally life changing. And I find I use it myself all the time. I wanted to explain procedural due process to my students. It wrote exactly the level of detail I needed–saved me a couple hours of research and writing. I use it to write vocabulary sentences for quizzes. My students pop their notes in it and ask it to quiz them, as a way to study-- and it works really well.

It’s not about replacing professional writers that care about copywrite. It’s about all those little communication tasks we all do each day.

100

Why? I mean, yes, an AI that “actually understands” the output would be fascinating, but that is ultimately is a hard to prove philosophical concept. But from a practical point of view if an AI produces useful content it doesn’t really matter if it is really conscious or is a Chinese Room.