I explain my experience with ChatGPT, and how this is going to disrupt knowledge work.
Photo by Hitesh Choudhary on Unsplash
Transcript
Is ChatGPT gonna take your job? I dunno if it's gonna take yours. I'm more concerned about mine. I've been playing with ChatGPT for about a week now and it's very impressive and I'm thinking about it from my point of view of the work that I do. , which by the way is in the role of learning experience design conventionally called training.
Also called like learning architecture. And just essentially thinking about when supporting a new organization and all of its employees on how they will learn new technology, new processes, new procedures. How's that gonna be done? Conventionally years and years ago, it was done by entirely by people.
So think about factories or even beyond that, looms or farms. The way that somebody learned something was another human would come along and say. , this is how you do it. Or the person ask, how do I do this? And two humans worked it out. Then came this thing called the internet , and it suddenly meant that humans could record thoughts from here onto a medium, and then other people could access that when they needed to.
So ChatGPT on its own. Not the disruption, but it's definitely one of the disruptions. That's the the key thing to think about. Think about search engines. They were significantly disruptive about 25 years ago and continue to be. But here's the thing. If the search engines were really going to fulfill their potential today, we would have no such thing as instructor classes.
Um, they, but they're still around. They're still playing a role as much as I think that a lot of the time they, they're not necessary. They still play a role, but they are a dying breed. Um, I think it's the same with this ChatGPT, that it will have a significant impact on the way people learn. But we are still, you know, it's gonna take some time.
I don't think it's gonna be very, very quick, but let's see. That's me being a bit pessimistic about the technology and a bit optimistic about the role of humans. But at the same time, it could, I could be completely wrong, . So two thoughts come to my mind. One is, , understanding the what could this thing do that could replace someone like me on the work that I do and the work that perhaps do if you're an information worker?, but second, maybe we can hold it out for as long as possible. Like maybe we can play a role in helping these sorts of technologies until they completely make us obsolete. The longer we can hold off or the better it's gonna be for us. Cuz there's this one utopian or dystopian, there's this one utopian I hope, day where we don't need to work any anymore.
We can just be creative human beings and all of the technology and the gadgets and the, you know, artificial intelligence can do all the, all the, the labor and the, the brain, you know, the thinking and all of that. So, I am gonna introduce you to something called Bloom's Taxonomy, because I think this really helps to bring this sort of information to life, but help us think beyond, like that's what we wanna understand, isn't it?
Not that is ChatGPT gonna take our jobs, but how do we be part of the revolution rather than be a victim? .
So this is Bloom's Taxonomy. Bloom's Taxonomy says there's six levels. Um, and when we are designing learning experiences or thinking about the role of humans or machines in the learning experience, thinking about what, what the person is trying to be able to do sits on this Bloom's taxonomy.
So the bottom level is, remember, then is understand then is apply, then analyze, evaluate, and create. By the way, there's a couple of different variations on this, so you might see different wording, but loosely speaking, we're looking at the lowest level being what you might call the lowest level of cognition.
That is to remember something, and the highest level is to to be creative, and then everything in between. . So I mentioned earlier on that humans used to learn from humans. So we needed to rely on each other on all levels of Bloom's taxonomy until the internet came along. Now, for the last 20 or so years, we've not needed to remember things.
We can just kind of outsource that to an automated process. The internet, uh, knowledge bases, that sort of thing. But that's been the frontier really, in my opinion. By the way, you might have different opinions on this or different perspectives, but that's kind of been where the technology has stopped is the remember level.
ChatGPT goes higher up on Bloom's taxonomy. Now that's either frightening or exciting or a bit of both, depends on your perspective. As I've been playing with it, that's what's been on my mind and that's what I encourage you to do that when you're chatting with ChatGPT, what level is it getting to?
Like I've asked it questions like, are you gonna take my job? And it's come up with a very interesting reaction and, and lots of other questions. Um, now if I was to put it right now where ChatGPT is, I think it's at the apply or analyze stage. Again, if you've played with ChatGPT, please share, share your perspective.
I think that ChatGPT can get to the analyze stage and that is incredibly exciting and incredibly scary. But that means that we humans need to focus on, evaluate and create. That's, that's where we need to be. Until the technology gets that good, it takes that from us as well. Now there are some other artificial intelligence, um, out there like Dall-e, which can create, uh, but you might say on Bloom's taxonomy, it's hit the top.
Um, and by the way, Dall-E, you can type in things and it'll make pictures based on your description, but I think that's really application . So it's lower on Bloom's taxonomy cuz it's scouring the internet and it's gathering information and then it's saying, "Hey look, this is what you've asked for". Um, so it's not really being creative, I think at the moment that still belongs to us as humans, but at the moment for now.
So my advice to you thinking about career, thinking about your work is what value can you add as high upon Bloom's taxonomy as possible? Because the robots are coming, and they want to take every one of those levels below, and it's just, I think it's inevitable that that's what's going to happen. Let me know what you think.
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