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In the previous installments, we have seen how Chat GPT compares to previous winners of this title and how the rules of this magazine could evaluate it. In principle, there is nothing in the history of Time’s title that would prevent this choice. So, the only thing that could prevent it from becoming the 2023 Person of the Year are other competitors. Who are the favorites for the Time Person of the Year title, and what are their chances?
Well, even in a simpler world than today’s, it is difficult to predict such things, and in turbulent times, predicting the future is a fool’s errand. However, let’s do exactly that. Let’s predict the future.
The bookies give the 2021 laureate, Elon Musk, the best odds. Well, I don’t see it. The only significant thing Musk can do by the end of the year is to finally destroy Twitter.
Following him is Joe Biden, also a former laureate. Biden can actually do something important. His White House has issued a Blueprint for AI Bill of Rights, a document that is supposed to establish legal and security frameworks for the development of artificial intelligence. However, for this paper to become a law, it must go through lengthy public discussions, congressional committees and subcommittees, plus both houses of Congress. And the Senate is dominated by people who are mostly over 60 years old, and their knowledge of the digital world is such that conservative politicians often leave comments on the TikTok profile of gay strippers, thinking they are sending private messages that nobody sees. I don’t know. I don’t see it.
Did you miss: Will Chat GPT become Time Magazine’s Person of the Year? – Part 1 Will Chat GPT become Time Magazine’s Person of the Year? – Part 2 Will Chat GPT become Time Magazine’s Person of the Year? – Part 3
Next, last year’s winner, Volodymyr Zelensky. Well… I don’t know. I suppose Zelensky would need a significant event by the end of the year to repeat last year’s success. A peace agreement that would lead to the end of the war. However, people who are dealing with even more foolish things than us here, predicting the future of the war in Ukraine, assume that both sides are preparing for at least eighteen more months of fighting.
Then Janet Yellen, the United States secretary of the treasury. I don’t know. I don’t see it. I have no further explanation. And then the Iran Protesters. Maybe. I don’t know. If they overthrow the regime in Iran. But with those demonstrations, there’s always the same problem. The protesters have better chants. The regime has tanks. Maybe. I don’t see it. In sixth place is Merrick Garland, the United States attorney general. Yes… I don’t know. Then there’s Xi Jinping, the President of China. I don’t see it. Unless he outs himself as an AI-created avatar. On the eighth place, there’s Lula da Silva, the former president of Brazil. I think even he doesn’t see it. On the ninth, Ron DeSantis, a possible contender against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. I don’t know. Hardly. Maybe next year. When the elections are held. Unless by then, Trump comes up with a nickname for him that sticks forever, so he can’t peel off all the money from conservative donors who would like a Republican Party without Trump.
And then, Charles III.
And at eleventh, Greta Thunberg. I don’t see it. Although, at least for the way she kicked ass on Twitter to former kickboxer, influencer and alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate, she deserves a better place among the favorites.
Maybe Chat GPT will never be a real competition to people who, despite numerous problematic choices, give the Time Person of the Year title the weight it has: Gandhi, JFK, the crew of Apollo 8, or the women who started the #metoo movement… But today, there is almost no sphere of life that Chat GPT hasn’t started to turn upside down. What the previous industrial revolutions did to the poorest layers of society, AI threatens to do to white-collar jobs. Today, Chat GPT is passing the bar exam with results that place it in the 90th percentile. People from a spectrum of different professions, from programmers and software developers to designers, from copywriters to data analysts, from accountants to stock traders, are thinking about what their jobs will look like in the time ahead and whether they will even exist.
We deliberately do not mention the impact Chat GPT has on political campaigns. Even without artificial intelligence, we have had politicians who promised to build only downhill roads and voters happy that someone finally found a way to save gasoline.
Anyway, that’s Chat GPT today. What will it look like in five years? Or ten? That probably exceeds the limits of our imagination and fiction.
Because of all this, anyone else chosen for Time’s Person of the Year 2023, compared to the hero of our story, will look like Ken Starr, the 1998 winner, an investigator who proved that Bill Clinton, the 1992 winner, had extramarital affairs.
Yes. A big deal. Objectively. If he had been a little more ambitious, he could have proved that the 1994 winner, Pope John Paul II, was a Catholic.
Objectively, Chat GPT today has no serious competition. Assuming this text is objective. And that it wasn’t written by Chat GPT.
