My Wife Asked ChatGPT to Tell Us About Montrose Colorado
Artificial Intelligence is all the rage this year, with constant reporting on, investigating of and playing with AI chat programs across the national airwaves. It seems as though large sections of the working population's impending replacement is being met with a level of collective cheer that I find a little concerning, to be honest.
Then again, I'm not above jumping on a hot trend when it lends to an easy day at work. Besides, ChatGPT is just so much fun to play around with. So, when my wife decided to probe the program's knowledge of Montrose, well you just know I would have to tell you what it had to say. This will be a good test to find out whether or not we should be intimidated by this new tech.
Here is what ChatGPT had to say to my wife about Montrose:
Since we're basically talking to a computer, naturally, she just asked it to tell us about Montrose. Now to be fair, I have a hard time telling people about Montrose, and I live here. Maybe I should be grading on that curve, but I'm not sure. In any event, when asked to tell us about Montrose, ChatGPT gave me a list of fun facts, which you can already get from any random drunk dude at the Horsefly. Not exactly what I would call, "high-caliber thinking," right there.
So, what does ChatGPT think is interesting about our fair city? Well, it was sure to point out that Montrose was founded in 1882 and named after the novel A Legend of Montrose, by Sir Walter Scott. In case you're curious, that is literally the first thing that pops up under the "History" tab on Montrose's Wikipedia page, proving even high-tech artificial intelligence has the work ethic of a high school junior. Though, that is the general tone of conversation on the internet, so whether that's a positive or negative sign remains up for debate, I guess.
ChatGPT also noted our, "...vibrant music scene with a variety of genres and venues to choose from." I'm not entirely sure how genres and venues are in any way related out here, since this isn't the New York Punk scene from the days of old. Though these generalities don't add much we don't already know about, it did give shout-outs to the Montrose Pavilion and the Summer Music Series, so that was nice.
So, what did we learn?
When it comes down to it, as exciting and frightening as the prospect of AI having high-level conversations with us may be, we aren't quite at the point of panic just yet. If we judge its level of thinking using humans as an example, we're still a few years away from it being able to make any decisions more complicated than picking a snack out of the fridge, just like your average teenager.