Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Solve Problems
By Job Angula
Problem-solving is a soft skill that is tightly coupled with the evolution of humankind. As we evolved and our cognitive abilities developed, human beings have applied intellect to understand the environment that we live in and identify solutions to the problems that we encounter. This has been the case from the stone age to the modern era. Every human invention is a solution to a problem. We learned how to create fire to keep warm and we created smartphones for convenience.
Search engines have been one of the greatest inventions of the 21st century. Search engines have revolutionised how we browse the internet to find information and acquire knowledge. Think about it, what is the first thing that you do every time you hear about a new concept or don’t know how to do something - you “google” it.
What is the challenge with the current search engines? It’s a one-way street and they are not conversational. The end user enters a search and the search engine presents results of what it thinks the end user is looking for. What if you don’t know what you are looking for (i.e., you’ve entered a poorly written search term) or the results presented don't contain what you are looking for? You have to enter a new search. Current search engines cannot ask you probing questions to help you define your search term/question.
An artificial intelligence (AI) research company called OpenAI has launched a conversational AI system called ChatGPT that will potentially solve this challenge. ChatGPT is an AI system that you can interact with naturally and conversationally and it is going to be a game changer. This is a “search engine” that you can have a conversation with and ask follow-up questions until your problem is solved.
The capability of ChatGPT that I am particularly excited about is the ability to write algorithms/source code based on user-specified requirements. If you are an innovator and you want source code to convert one currency to another, you can specify the requirements in the prompt and ChatGPT will write all the source code for you with clear and detailed instructions on how to set up your code. ChatGPT can also help you debug any issues that you encounter along the way. This demonstrates the power of artificial intelligence and how it can spur innovation.
The research preview of ChatGPT is currently free. Researchers and the Namibian youth, especially the unemployed that have access to the internet should utilise this opportunity to make use of this cutting-edge technology to solve challenges and innovate. Academia and lawmakers should also take note of this technology because it can present serious ethical and privacy challenges if unregulated.
AI will shape how humankind solves problems in the modern era. The art of problem-solving is no longer solely dependent on human intelligence and cognition. I believe that AI will enable underdeveloped countries to leapfrog into the fourth industrial revolution. AI will also open up fields such as computer science to the masses and drawbacks such as the lack of or expensive software engineering talent will no longer hold back innovation.
