Artificial intelligence programs can't replace human: Experts

Vietnamese technology experts said the possibility of AI-based applications such as ChatGPT being able to replace humans in performing professional tasks is not on the horizon in the near future.

The AI-powered app ChatGPT launched by US-based tech developer OpenAI has received some 100 million users. Photo: AFP/VNA

Launched in late November 2022 by the US-based tech firm OpenAI, the popular artificial intelligence chatbot has reached more than 100 million users in the last two months (as of January-end).

The  AI-powered program has answered millions of questions, and the texts it generated have almost surprised everyone.

The chatbot has been asked to write poems and media articles, do the math, resolve logical topics, and even mentor people in dealing with their life problems.

For students, ChatGPT may be a good tool that helps them easily solve problems at school, while white-collar workers may find it a supportive instrument to make their office works less stressful.

For now, ChatGPT has still amazed the global community with its performances.

But in the near future, the AI chatbot may only be treated as a reference and not as a source of reliable answers.

"I've been using ChatGPT for a while. It seems to me more like a search engine than a source where to look for valid answers," Dang Minh Tuan, director of CMC Institute of Science and Technology, a member of Vietnam's second-largest technology group CMC Group, told The Hanoi Times.

He said that the engine can help create different types of content, increase productivity, enhance data exploration, and optimize the quality of the labor force. “However, the chatbot has no capability of being creative as its answers are made of keywords found from the database that match those in the questions,” he added.

In addition, those answers can be either right or controversial, so users need to double-check them, he advised, noting that database entries depend on the application operator, so ChatGPT is only a reference.

Tuan and other technology specialists are confident that ChatGPT cannot fully replace humans in performing professional tasks.

Ngo Tan Vu Khanh, country director of cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, said ChatGPT is not new in the world, but it appears at the right time and becomes a blockbuster.

In his opinion, the engine will have minor implications on people and the way they work.

A reply is provided by ChatGPT about Tat Den (Lights Out), a story written about the lives of Vietnamese people during French colonialism. Photo: The Hanoi Times

Vu Ngoc Son, technology director of the National Cyber Security JSC, said that ChatGPT as well as other AI engines will evolve day after day. But they would not replace people, particularly in creative works that require people to brainstorm and come up with groundbreaking solutions.

On the other hand, ChatGPT provides users with consolidated data and information in the shortest possible time, but the results may not be satisfactory, said Tuan, director of CMC Institute of Science and Technology. "ChatGPT is now just a linguistic mode that gives unreliable answers to users' queries. It is necessary to recheck the data and information before using them," he said.

In Vietnam, technology groups such as CMC and FPT have developed their own chatbots, but these models are hardly comparable to ChatGPT.

"With about 3,000 employees at CMC Group, we use the chatbot to answer data and policy questions," Tuan explains.

"Our chatbot has also been created for the Ministry of Finance to help solve data problems," he said, indicating that the AI chatbots in use in Vietnam are for specific purposes and unlike ChatGPT, an application that can provide answers to a wide range of topics.