Road Notes and ChatGPT

by Pa Rock

Road Warrior

Rosie and I are back on the road and again visiting at the home of my son, Tim, and his family in the Kansas suburbs of Kansas City.   We were just here two weeks ago when Granddaughter Olive and I went to see a regional production of "Hamilton" in Kansas City on my 75th birthday - and had a wonderful time!   I am back to see one of my favorite performers, John Mellencamp, tomorrow night at the Midland Theatre.  I have only been to the historic Midland one other time, and that was to see Diana Ross several years ago.  That was a great show with the star changing gowns after every other number - and there were a lot of songs and gown changes!  I suspect Mellencamp may be a little less concerned with his wardrobe.

On the day that we left Kansas after our last visit, I mentioned that we pulled into a McDonald's for breakfast where I ordered a sausage-egg McMuffin, a carton of milk, and a large unsweet iced tea - and the bill totaled a concerning $6.66!  This morning as we were leaving West Plains, I ordered the same meal and it was a bit pricier:  $7.02.   There are hidden costs involved with leading the idyllic rural life that the realtors invariably fail to mention!

Not long after we arrived at the Kansas Macy's, Tim said that he wanted to introduce me to the artificial intelligence (AI) service that is currently all the buzz:  ChatGPT.  I had seen it mentioned in Bill Gates' latest newsletter and heard some discussion of it on National Public Radio (NPR), but I had no idea what a marvelous service it is.  Basically a user, me - for instance, types in a request and a response is immediately generated - anything from general information to finished creative projects.  If you wanted a poem about ditch diggers written in the style of Bob Dylan, supposedly ChatGPT could cough one up.  I asked it to provide me with a story that Robin Hood and his merry men might tell around a campfire, and it instantly produced a serviceable tale that an ambitious writer could expand on.  Tim has used it for some very specific information about a place that he and his family will be visiting this summer, and it complied with better and more detailed information than he probably could have gotten from a travel agent - and again, it was instantaneous!  

I suspect that the world is just now arriving at the front door of the computer revolution, and I am pleased that I was able to stick around long enough to get some sense of where technology is leading.  My grandchildren are only five generations removed from my grandparents. and they will see things and live in a world that neither my grandparents nor I ever imagined in our wildest dreams!   Just think about where five more generations could take mankind!

Take a gander into the future and check out ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer).  There is no fee for the standard version, an it is absolutely amazing!

And if tomorrow's blog posting is written in the style of Groucho Marx penning obituaries, you will know that I had help!