I suspect we're late to this party, but a week ago, we heard about Chat GPT. Now, it seems to be everywhere! It answers questions, it writes books, it creates software code, it cooks, it cleans! What doesn't it do?
And it's not just GPT. All the other artificially intelligent bots, spots, dots etc. seem incredible and it sure appears that their impact will be wide, deep and profound.
That's why, even though we're not from the great "show me" state of Missouri, we wanted to see firsthand why there's so much hype.
So, we signed up for a Chat GPT account and took it for a little test ride. It was surprisingly intuitive and after a few starter questions, we decided to have a bit of fun.
Hey, Chat GPT... "What came first, the chicken or the egg?". After a very short pause, the little blinking light in the text box began typing out a response. Unfortunately, we didn't get a direct answer, but we did get a recap of the history of the question. Turns out this is what is known as a "common causality question". Common? Fine...we get it. No points for creativity.
Then, we decided to go big and asked this one...
We could almost feel a yawn as Chat GPT tapped out the answer.
All right. then, enough horsing around. Let's ask it a very relevant question for us as a company. You see, we spend a lot of time trying to find ways to tell our story and it's a bit challenging since clothing is just a part of who we are as a company. To be clear, we absolutely obsess over every Sitch of the gear, and we think we know how to tell that part of the story.
Unfortunately, we tend to struggle when we try to explain how important community is to us and how we really, really want to put more kindness out in the world. And that's a problem, because those things matter to us. A lot!
We've tried to tell this story a number of ways and we wanted to find out how our friendly, neighborhood chatbot did compared to all of us humans who actually work here at Coeur. So, to end our little experiment, we asked Chat GPT to write a couple sentence about a triathlon apparel company called Coeur Sports that wants to bring like-minded women together and make the world a kinder place. Here's the exchange:
Whoa! That's not bad. In fact, it's darn good. Color us impressed and just a tiny bit scared. This thing is really good and it's only going to get better. Just like it's art creating cousin Dall-e, it appears that Chat GPT has the potential to do more than just perform cheap parlor tricks and that probably means it will displace a lot of people. And by displace, we mean make them unemployed. Many of our friends, especially here in LA earn their living by writing or by creating art and we can't help but worry about them.
In fact, we're already seeing ads popping up promoting AI engines that can write blogs. Editorial note, this post was written by a good old fashioned human. Grammatical errors, typos and all!
Some will argue that change is inevitable and that this revolution will make the world better. The first part of that sentence is definitely correct and we can only hope they are right on the second part.
So, just like we always do when we're a bit stressed, we pumped up our tires and went for a little ride. This time it was on the fat tires and we went up into the mountains of Santa Monica. We're so lucky to be 15 minutes from this incredible area.
As always, when we got back, our heads were more clear and our hearts were definitely more full.
It's beyond us to say how wide-ranging the effects of artificial intelligence will be, but one thing we we can say with confidence. As good as Chat GPT is, it will never be able to compete with an even greater and more creative force. Namely....Chat NATURE!
So, along with the rest of the world, we'll watch as this thing unfolds and do our best to go with the flow while continuing to put real, human-made kindness out into the world every step of the way.
Happy Training and Racing Friends!
ps. Speaking of community, we're hosting a spring, women's triathlon camp just outside Atlanta, GA in April. We'd love to have you come out and make some new friends! To learn more, just click here:
Coeur Sports, Spring Women's Triathlon Camp