OMG. I totally fell for this!
On Sat, Apr 1, 2023 at 9:35 AM Dennis Paulson <
dennispaulson at comcast.net>
wrote:
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You've done it again, Matt. I always look forward to your April 1st post!
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Dennis Paulson
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Seattle
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On Apr 1, 2023, at 6:15 AM, Matt Bartels <mattxyz at earthlink.net> wrote:
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Marymoor Park, in Redmond WA, is leading the way in AI-fueled birding.
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With the weekly Marymoor bird outings beginning their 30th year, Michael
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Hobbs, leader of the walk, announced a major change in how future walks
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will proceed. Beginning in April, ChatGPT will be used in lieu of birders
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in the field to generate the weekly bird reports.
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ChatGPT has exploded in popularity this year as the first widely used
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example of narrow AI. It appears capable of producing near-human sounding
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plausible narratives using a LLM in response to user questions. Hobbs, no
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stranger to technological advances, had just the dataset to train ChatGPT
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on -; namely, his website https://www.marymoor.org/BirdBlog.htm. With
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weekly reports for years of consistent birding outings at Marymoor Park, it
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contained patterns the AI would easily be able to learn from.
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"Honestly, it takes very little work to train ChatGPT to produce reports
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-- arguably better reports than we humans can produce", Hobbs
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reported. ChatGPT reviews past Marymoor reports for the week and broader
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trends on eBird and produces a near-perfect report for future weeks. Hobbs
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is now working to incorporate weather data into the model as well for
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better precision."
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Although he has already had ChatGPT produce the reports for each week in
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2023, he is keeping future reports a closely held secret, saying "Afterall,
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the joy of being a birder is reading about other people's birding stories,
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whether to smile at the absurd misses or to groan about the birds you
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missed by staying home that day. I wouldn't want to take that away."
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He will offer one clue to the future though: May the 4th -; go to Marymoor
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on that date.
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Faced with the prospect of AI produced bird reports, the Washington Bird
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Records Committee and the eBird reviewer community have tentatively agreed
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to treat reports seriously. Said one member "Seriously, if the quality of
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detail produced by ChatGPT is as convincing as I've seen, it will be a step
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above many reports we look at already."
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While some are hesitant, others welcome the coming change. "Anything that
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might lessen the stress mobs of birders disturbing nature is constantly
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producing would be a step forward," says one formerly avid birder. Others
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are less excited about the changes -; ChatGPT has not helped things with
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some of its more public failures -; Academics have pointed
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<https://oxford-review.com/chatgpt-making-up-references/> to papers
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produced with footnotes created out of whole cloth. A recent article
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<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kevin-roose-ai-chatbot_n_63eeb367e4b0063ccb2bcc45> saw
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the reporter holding an extended conversation w/ the AI that led to the
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reporter being urged to leave his spouse for the bot -; And ChatGPT is
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suspected to be behind the new awkward renaming choice of some local
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birding groups already.
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For now, Hobbs says he'll continue to walk at Marymoor weekly, but he
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looks forward to stepping away and allowing the bots to continue his legacy
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-; "Imagine all those Thursdays I could sleep in" he says wistfully.
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Matt Bartels
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Seattle, WA
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