[Tweeters] Marymoor Park weekly walk to turn to ChatGPT for future reports.

[Dennis Paulson]

You’ve done it again, Matt. I always look forward to your April 1st post!

Dennis Paulson
Seattle


> On Apr 1, 2023, at 6:15 AM, Matt Bartels <mattxyz at earthlink.net> wrote:

> 

> Marymoor Park, in Redmond WA, is leading the way in AI-fueled birding.

>  

>  With the weekly Marymoor bird outings beginning their 30th year, Michael Hobbs, leader of the walk, announced a major change in how future walks will proceed. Beginning in April, ChatGPT will be used in lieu of birders in the field to generate the weekly bird reports.

>  

> ChatGPT has exploded in popularity this year as the first widely used example of narrow AI. It appears capable of producing near-human sounding plausible narratives using a LLM in response to user questions. Hobbs, no stranger to technological advances, had just the dataset to train ChatGPT on – namely, his website https://www.marymoor.org/BirdBlog.htm <https://www.marymoor.org/BirdBlog.htm>. With weekly reports for years of consistent birding outings at Marymoor Park, it contained patterns the AI would easily be able to learn from.

>  

> “Honestly, it takes very little work to train ChatGPT to produce reports -- arguably better reports than we humans can produce”, Hobbs reported.  ChatGPT reviews past Marymoor reports for the week and broader trends on eBird and produces a near-perfect report for future weeks. Hobbs is now working to incorporate weather data into the model as well for better precision.”

>  

> Although he has already had ChatGPT produce the reports for each week in 2023, he is keeping future reports a closely held secret, saying “Afterall, the joy of being a birder is reading about other people’s birding stories, whether to smile at the absurd misses or to groan about the birds you missed by staying home that day. I wouldn’t want to take that away.” 

>  

> He will offer one clue to the future though: May the 4th – go to Marymoor on that date.

>  

> Faced with the prospect of AI produced bird reports, the Washington Bird Records Committee and the eBird reviewer community have tentatively agreed to treat reports seriously. Said one member “Seriously, if the quality of detail produced by ChatGPT is as convincing as I’ve seen, it will be a step above many reports we look at already.”

>  

> While some are hesitant, others welcome the coming change. “Anything that might lessen the stress mobs of birders disturbing nature is constantly producing would be a step forward,” says one formerly avid birder. Others are less excited about the changes – ChatGPT has not helped things with some of its more public failures – Academics have pointed <https://oxford-review.com/chatgpt-making-up-references/> to papers produced with footnotes created out of whole cloth. A recent article <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kevin-roose-ai-chatbot_n_63eeb367e4b0063ccb2bcc45> saw the reporter holding an extended conversation w/ the AI that led to the reporter being urged to leave his spouse for the bot – And ChatGPT is suspected to be behind the new awkward renaming choice of some local birding groups already.

>  

> For now, Hobbs says he’ll continue to walk at Marymoor weekly, but he looks forward to stepping away and allowing the bots to continue his legacy – “Imagine all those Thursdays I could sleep in” he says wistfully.

>  

> Matt Bartels

> Seattle, WA

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