Just a few days ago, on November 30, 2022, a tool called ChatGPT was opened to the public. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Just another chatbot, I thought. Something limited, with prefabricated answers and little usefulness. I was wrong.
What I found was different.
From the very first moment, the feeling is strange: you type a question and the answer isn’t just coherent, but structured, contextual and surprisingly human. It doesn’t just return links or generic phrases. It explains, argues, summarizes, compares. It’s as if you were talking to someone who has read too much… and never gets tired.
A conversation that doesn’t feel programmed
What’s most striking isn’t that it answers, but how it answers. You can ask it technical questions, request it to write an essay, correct a text, or even simulate a conversation. And it does so with a fluency that shatters the expectations we had of automated systems.
It’s not perfect. Sometimes it makes mistakes. Other times it responds with a confidence that can be misleading. But even those failures are interesting: they don’t seem like machine errors, but rather «human» ones.
The «internet» moment
I have the feeling —and I don’t think I’m exaggerating— that we are standing at one of those moments that are later studied with historical perspective. Like when Google appeared, or when we started using smartphones.
This isn’t simply a tool for asking questions. It’s a new interface with information.
Until now, we searched for data. From now on, it seems that we’re going to be able to have a dialogue with it.
What does this mean?
It’s still too early to know with certainty, but some ideas are starting to take shape:
The way we learn may change radically.
Writing, software development or even customer service could be largely automated.
And, perhaps more disturbing, it will become increasingly difficult to distinguish between content generated by humans and by machines.
Between amazement and caution
It’s not all advantages. If this technology evolves the way it seems to, it will also raise serious problems: misinformation, dependency, loss of certain cognitive abilities.
But today, in early December 2022, the dominant feeling is another one: amazement.
Because for the first time, a machine doesn’t just execute instructions.
It seems to understand what we’re saying to it.
And that changes the rules of the game.