From Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics, penned in the 1940s, to the dystopian Terminator movies, the first of which was released in the 1980s, hype and panic over artificial intelligence (AI) are nothing new. Yet this can be easy to forget among the whirlwind of chatter that accompanied the launch of the large language model (LLM) ChatGPT in November 2022.
The term artificial intelligence is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary simply as “the capacity of computers or other machines to exhibit or simulate intelligent behaviour” and was founded as an academic discipline as far back as 1956. It has woven itself into daily life in many ways that can now be taken for granted—for example, in the form of advanced search engines, such as Google, or the algorithms that recommend the next piece of content on YouTube, Netflix, or TikTok.
In the wine industry, too, AI has been used awhile. It began with simple functions, such as weather forecasting, and has since expanded to more complex tasks, such as precision viticulture and fermentation control​. It is used to great effect in the form of consumer recommendations; I first encountered the personalization app Preferabli, then called Wine Ring, in 2017 and was hugely impressed by its ability to become acquainted with me as an individual user. Preferabli’s AI technology, however, is underpinned by a solid base of human experts who provide the sensory analysis that makes the app so effective.
Although AI has existed all this time, the explosion of discussion prompted by the launch of ChatGPT has brought the technology to the forefront in an unprecedented way. And with good reason, because the generative AI capabilities of this new cohort of LLMs are impressive. They are trained on massive data sets and can produce natural, humanlike language in a vast array of tones and styles. They can converse with us in the roles of adviser, teacher, assistant, coach—the possibilities
Interesting. I use Chatgpt for writing all kinds of things, not to come up with the original piece, but to enhance mine, (as a ESL person). Also to give me ideas or to save enormous amount of time from googling. However, for my Diploma studies I only asked it to give me a study plan (which I have not followed because I am very busy), or a strategic summary (saving me time) of varieties, compare regions, etc. But never more than that. The exams are handwritten and that for me it tougher than memorizing. I use the diploma as an exercise to keep my mind working! I wonder how they can sustain in time with handwritten exams. My children don't do any handwriting in school except for calculations on paper... They do write, but basic. Only use computer now in schools for writing. It is sad, but they don't know cursive (don't understand it either). I don't say it is wrong or right, I just say things change and the WSET will have to adapt. Maybe AI is going to even be required for certain exercises.
Balanced piece. Every tech advance has required academia (Wine or otherwise) to adjust; calculators, word processors, spell check, grammar check.
Just curious as to how one goes about asking LLMs to summarize long pieces of text to extract essential, useful pieces of information?