Ever since Fellows had experience at Libelle, a company that automated SAP system refreshes, Fellows became aware of the power of automated tasks that were normally done by human effort and labor. Fellows worked for the company in 2014 and 2015. In the interviews he has given on ChatGPT, Fellows has explained that what makes ChatGPT so powerful is that it is not only able to think convergently but is also able to start thinking divergently.
Convergent thinking is when there is only one solution to a problem, such as a calculus problem, a physics problem, learning a foreign language, or doing a close reading to a novel, whereas divergent thinking is where there are multiple solutions to the problem. Another reason why Fellows says that ChatGPT is so powerful is because it is starting to encompass the Five Big Personality Traits of openness to experience, agreeableness, neuroticism, extroversion, and conscientiousness. Fellows also make the assertion that ChatGPT is starting to have practical intelligence, which Robert Sternberg defines as “knowing what to say to whom, when to say it, and how to say it with maximum effect.”
During the interviews, when Fellows was asked if schools should ban it, he says that they should not because students will be able to use ChatGPT in the workforce. He likens the banning of ChatGPT to banning calculators in schools several decades ago when the calculator first came out; students will be able to use the calculator in the workforce, so why should they not be able to use ChatGPT? He also believes that high-schools should start instructing students in prompt engineering starting in 9th grade. Prompt Engineering is the process of structuring an instruction that can be interpreted and understood by a generative AI model.
In terms of the workforce, Fellows claims that ChatGPT and other forms of AI will shake up the workforce more than the internet did twenty-five years ago. He says the jobs most at risk are finance, accounting, legal, content creation, and coding. Fellows notes that the jobs most at risk are jobs that require little human judgment and mostly require convergent thinking. He also is wary that the ChatGPT revolution will displace more jobs than what happened in the industrial revolution because language, trust, and automation are happening to a much more significant degree.
You can view the interviews below:
ChatGPT/AI
Just a few months after OpenAI released ChatGPT, which is a generative form of artificial intelligence, Thomas Fellows was interviewed by several affiliate stations to comment on how it would affect the workforce and how schools/colleges should address the tool. Overall, so far, he has given interviews in 19 states including South Carolina, Wisconsin, Illinois, Hawaii, Texas, Wyoming, Indiana, Florida, Pennsylvania, Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, New Mexico, New York, Tennessee, Alabama, West Virginia, North Dakota, Minnesota and Georgia.
Ever since Fellows had experience at Libelle, a company that automated SAP system refreshes, Fellows became aware of the power of automated tasks that were normally done by human effort and labor. Fellows worked for the company in 2014 and 2015. In the interviews he has given on ChatGPT, Fellows has explained that what makes ChatGPT so powerful is that it is not only able to think convergently but is also able to start thinking divergently.
Convergent thinking is when there is only one solution to a problem, such as a calculus problem, a physics problem, learning a foreign language, or doing a close reading to a novel, whereas divergent thinking is where there are multiple solutions to the problem. Another reason why Fellows says that ChatGPT is so powerful is because it is starting to encompass the Five Big Personality Traits of openness to experience, agreeableness, neuroticism, extroversion, and conscientiousness. Fellows also make the assertion that ChatGPT is starting to have practical intelligence, which Robert Sternberg defines as “knowing what to say to whom, when to say it, and how to say it with maximum effect.”
During the interviews, when Fellows was asked if schools should ban it, he says that they should not because students will be able to use ChatGPT in the workforce. He likens the banning of ChatGPT to banning calculators in schools several decades ago when the calculator first came out; students will be able to use the calculator in the workforce, so why should they not be able to use ChatGPT? He also believes that high-schools should start instructing students in prompt engineering starting in 9th grade. Prompt Engineering is the process of structuring an instruction that can be interpreted and understood by a generative AI model.
In terms of the workforce, Fellows claims that ChatGPT and other forms of AI will shake up the workforce more than the internet did twenty-five years ago. He says the jobs most at risk are finance, accounting, legal, content creation, and coding. Fellows notes that the jobs most at risk are jobs that require little human judgment and mostly require convergent thinking. He also is wary that the ChatGPT revolution will displace more jobs than what happened in the industrial revolution because language, trust, and automation are happening to a much more significant degree.
You can view the interviews below: