Photos and Story By J.C. Martin For WestportLocalPress.com  Click on an image to enlarge and open gallery.

In just over an highly informative and entertaining hour Westport resident David Pogue, well known as the five-time Emmy award winner for his stories on the very popular CBS Sunday Morning, as well as a New York Times best selling author, and for five TED talk appearances also as host of 20 Nova science specials on PBS. His tech bona fides are well established having co-written more than 120 books, including dozens in the Missing Manual tech series which he created in 1999, six in the For Dummies series of books as well as iPhone Unlocked and Mac Unlocked.

He was welcomed to the Trefz Forum stage of the Westport Library by the Y's Men of Westport/Weston and presented a well structured series of topics on both the up and much discussed down sides of the recent boom in the use of Artificial Intelligence in many areas of our everyday life. The Y's men, now 400 strong is composed of retired and semi retired men who are involved in various community oriented activities and presentations.

He began the presentation with a recording of one of the first interactions with AI he experienced where a Google AI program called a hair salon and booked an appointment with the salon receptionist. This actual conversation included a back and forth to set a date and time and discuss the details making it appear to the salon employee the she was actually talking to a "Lisa", a female client, complete with questions punctuated with the occasional "mum". The response once this came to light was alarm and fear of the implications of this kind of technology. There are many professions which may potentially be at risk including commercial and consumer art, architecture, fashion, interior and graphic design, photography and other professions which currently provide a living for many.

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Rogue then opined about the ChatGTP program which is according to studies, already being used to create essays such as one his son had recently written for college admissions. When he asked ChatGTP to create such an essay the program produced essay was very similar to his son's. Pogue said states and institutions have already begun banning its use. Pogue related that this is virtually impossible to enforce as this ChatGTP style software will soon be available in Microsoft Word and Google Docs. He described an interaction a friend had with ChatGTP that lasted a couple of hours and the ChatBot started getting frustrated and began saying things that were nothing short of bizarre and alarming.

He next demonstrated how artwork can be created by simply telling an AI program named Dall-E2, named for the artist Dali combined with the title of the the Pixar movie WALL-E which he said had been described  "as terrifying". The company that developed DALLE-2, Open AI, which was co-founded by a group which included Elon Musk in 2015. The company "trained" the software by feeding it 600 million labeled images from the internet. He asked the audience to suggest the parameters which were, create a water-color pink taxi in Times Square. He then showed the real world impact of such technology by sharing a clip from one of his four CBS Sunday Morning segments on AI which included an interview with a very successful artist raising the question, "why would someone pay a lot of money to an artist" when this kind of tech can do it for very little money.

Photos and Story By J.C. Martin For WestportLocalPress.com  Click on an image to enlarge and open gallery.

Pogue addressed the fear of catastrophic consequences with this of this new tech with his segment, "Every New Invention Predictably Triggers Panic" Argument which presented quotes and comments through the years with every new "radical" invention, be it radio, television, electricity even telephones. Dire effects were predicted when those inventions entered everyday life, however it may seem now that these new technologies may have a substantial impact, for good or for not-so-good on our everyday quality of life.

Pogue addressed the fear of catastrophic consequences with this of this new tech with his segment, "Every New Invention Predictably Triggers Panic" Argument which presented quotes and comments through the years with every new "radical" invention, be it radio, television, electricity even telephones. Dire effects were predicted when those inventions entered everyday life, however it may seem now that these new technologies may have a substantial impact, for good or for not-so-good on our everyday quality of life.

There is so much more to Pogue's presentation than can be properly described here and have justice done to it.

The Westport Library has made the entire fascinating presentation available on Youtube, visit: https://youtu.be/G-z9a86Bclc

Photos and Story By J.C. Martin For WestportLocalPress.com