Coding matters: Sinkholes ahead?

Photo of a road with potholes

Like load-shedding, potholes are part of the South African experience. In true South African fashion, we even have jokes about them. (How do you know when a driver is drunk? He is driving in a straight line.)

In addition to keeping a close lookout for potholes, we often need to find new routes. Three weeks ago, the municipality dug up a road that I use daily. The road is still blocked, although I have yet to see any workers there. And then there are roads that are permanently closed due to sinkholes.

Potholes on the internet

In the 1990s, people referred to the internet as the “Information Superhighway”. Like a highway, it connects things – computers and information. And it gets congested. I guess there are potholes too. But is there a bigger risk, like the possibility of a sinkhole?

I read an article this week that describes ChatGPT as an information virus. It predicts Google will be in big trouble soon.

Here’s the reasoning:

“As the internet “fills up” with undetectable AI-generated content, Google’s search algorithms will cease to work reliably. People currently complain that ChatGPT produces confidently wrong answers and say that Google doesn’t have this problem. These people are missing an important point: ChatGPT answers get posted to the web. Google cannot detect them. Therefore, very soon, Google will also be filled with these confidently wrong answers and there is no known technique for filtering them out.”

It’s an interesting prediction. Google (or any other search engine) searches produces both right and wrong answers. We already need better skills to evaluate search engine results. With even more content, this will become more difficult. The internet road is getting bumpier.

Sinkhole vs bridge

Will AI be a sinkhole in our path or a bridge to something better? There is so much speculation. AI will destroy jobs. AI will create new jobs. AI will improve human thinking. AI may be the end of humanity.

That last prediction would be easy to dismiss, except that the doomsayer is Geoffrey Hinton, one of the “godfathers” of AI. The interview is on YouTube. It’s quite disturbing.

Something lighter

It’s easy to become overwhelmed / frustrated / annoyed by all the videos, blog and emails about AI. So here’s something light and entertaining for the programmers: the English programming language.

I love this line:

Resilience: English programs can execute on organic hardware despite severe syntax errors.

And that’s a reason to be optimistic about the future. Humans – English-speaking or otherwise – are resilient. We might get lost a few times, but we’ll find a new route to avoid those potholes.

What do you think?

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