Ghostwriter, a PBS children's TV show that aired from 1992 to 1995, featured a diverse group of friends who solved mysteries around their Brooklyn neighborhood with the help of their haunted typewriter. The Ghostwriter typewriter created by Arvind Sanjeev, interaction designer, artist, and CTO of Lumen.world, bears no paranormal association with the show's namesake. Instead, the Ghostwriter typewriter is animated by OpenAI's GPT-3 and enables its user to converse and co-create on paper. Sanjeev wanted to evoke warm feelings with the typewriter and chose the typewriter's mental model, which is an artifact from the past, for this reason. The typewriter represents a world where technology was more physical and mindful of people's lives.
Sanjeev stripped much of the original mechanical components from a Brother AX-325 typewriter and replaced them with an Arduino controller and Raspberry Pi. The Arduino reads what the human user has typed, feeds that input to OpenAI's GPT-3 API through the Raspberry Pi, the AI generates a response, and Ghostwriter prints it back onto the page. Sanjeev had to decode the existing electronic keyboard's matrix, and users can influence the AI's answers using physical knobs that adjust Ghostwriter's "creativity" and "response length" parameters.
Sanjeev is working to open-source the project so that others might build their own Ghostwriter. He believes that automated text generation systems will transform knowledge fields by lessening the rigors of certain jobs and automating much of the drudgier aspects of work. Sanjeev thinks that the AI revolution will trickle down into specific knowledge fields, and AI will become ubiquitous and recede into the background of our lives.
Sanjeev declared that generative AI is not a fad, but he also emphasized that it is merely a software for creativity, not a replacement for it. The applications of GPT-3 depend on the medium in which it is employed. Sanjeev sees GPT-3 as an active instrument for digital content creation and as a "library of ideas for inspiration" for makers in the physical space. Sanjeev believes that the key to unlocking the potential of chatGPT in maker spaces lies in creating meaningful physical interfaces for it. He expects AI to inspire new ideas but ultimately acknowledges that humanity and life will always be the center of any successful work, regardless of whether it is realized through AI.
Original Article: Engadget
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