[Tweeters] Marymoor Park weekly walk to turn to ChatGPT for future reports.

[Ven. Dhammadinna]

OMG. I totally fell for this!

On Sat, Apr 1, 2023 at 9:35 AM Dennis Paulson <dennispaulson at comcast.net>
wrote:


> You’ve done it again, Matt. I always look forward to your April 1st post!

>

> Dennis Paulson

> Seattle

>

> On Apr 1, 2023, at 6:15 AM, Matt Bartels <mattxyz at earthlink.net> wrote:

>

> Marymoor Park, in Redmond WA, is leading the way in AI-fueled birding.

>

>  With the weekly Marymoor bird outings beginning their 30th year, Michael

> Hobbs, leader of the walk, announced a major change in how future walks

> will proceed. Beginning in April, ChatGPT will be used in lieu of birders

> in the field to generate the weekly bird reports.

>

> ChatGPT has exploded in popularity this year as the first widely used

> example of narrow AI. It appears capable of producing near-human sounding

> plausible narratives using a LLM in response to user questions. Hobbs, no

> stranger to technological advances, had just the dataset to train ChatGPT

> on – namely, his website https://www.marymoor.org/BirdBlog.htm. With

> weekly reports for years of consistent birding outings at Marymoor Park, it

> contained patterns the AI would easily be able to learn from.

>

> “Honestly, it takes very little work to train ChatGPT to produce reports

> -- arguably better reports than we humans can produce”, Hobbs

> reported.  ChatGPT reviews past Marymoor reports for the week and broader

> trends on eBird and produces a near-perfect report for future weeks. Hobbs

> is now working to incorporate weather data into the model as well for

> better precision.”

>

> Although he has already had ChatGPT produce the reports for each week in

> 2023, he is keeping future reports a closely held secret, saying “Afterall,

> the joy of being a birder is reading about other people’s birding stories,

> whether to smile at the absurd misses or to groan about the birds you

> missed by staying home that day. I wouldn’t want to take that away.”

>

> He will offer one clue to the future though: May the 4th – go to Marymoor

> on that date.

>

> Faced with the prospect of AI produced bird reports, the Washington Bird

> Records Committee and the eBird reviewer community have tentatively agreed

> to treat reports seriously. Said one member “Seriously, if the quality of

> detail produced by ChatGPT is as convincing as I’ve seen, it will be a step

> above many reports we look at already.”

>

> While some are hesitant, others welcome the coming change. “Anything that

> might lessen the stress mobs of birders disturbing nature is constantly

> producing would be a step forward,” says one formerly avid birder. Others

> are less excited about the changes – ChatGPT has not helped things with

> some of its more public failures – Academics have pointed

> <https://oxford-review.com/chatgpt-making-up-references/> to papers

> produced with footnotes created out of whole cloth. A recent article

> <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kevin-roose-ai-chatbot_n_63eeb367e4b0063ccb2bcc45> saw

> the reporter holding an extended conversation w/ the AI that led to the

> reporter being urged to leave his spouse for the bot – And ChatGPT is

> suspected to be behind the new awkward renaming choice of some local

> birding groups already.

>

> For now, Hobbs says he’ll continue to walk at Marymoor weekly, but he

> looks forward to stepping away and allowing the bots to continue his legacy

> – “Imagine all those Thursdays I could sleep in” he says wistfully.

>

> Matt Bartels

> Seattle, WA

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