Wharton professor Christian Terwiesch was sitting with his grown children around the dinner table when the subject of artificial intelligence came up. Both of his kids had been experimenting with the nascent technology in their respective fields: “one of them is interested in design…and the other one is interested in computer science.”
Eventually his son prompted ChatGPT to explain a sorting algorithm “using terms from Homer Simpson.”
“It was funny,” Terwiesch said, adding, “it was, from a computer science perspective, correct, and it was so easy as a user interface.”
ChatGPT users can input any prompt — The Inquirer previously asked it to write a story about Gritty — and the tool will respond nearly instantly with an answer written so clearly that it would be easy to believe a human had written it instead of a computer. Some examples show ChatGPT’s ability to write essays, legal briefs, and even full songs that mimic an artist’s writing style.