Artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT means we need to learn how to manage them

What if it's not (as it appears to be) something heartfelt written by a man with his heart on his sleeve but is instead something contrived and conjured by ChatGPT the newsworthy chatbot, an entity with no heart at all?

As I (or perhaps ChatGPT) write this there is a ferment of news and comment about ChatGPT.

It and its possible ramifications for mankind was the reported "talk of the town" at last week's annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.

Australia's chief scientist Cathy Foley has just said that "this [the invention of ChatGPT by the OpenAI company] is an example where the private sector has brought up a technology ... we haven't been ready for ... where we need to [quickly] work out how we manage this".

Everywhere scholars, writers and teaching institutions are agonising over how bots like these (God's gift to the plagiarist, to the lazy, deceitful and talentless "writer") are set to change the thinking, creating, writing world as we have known it.

And in breaking news as I (or perhaps ChatGPT) write, Google is announcing that it is about to release its own powerful rival to ChatGPT.

So the chatbots are coming! The chatbots are coming!

Everything about robots and AI is always intellect-tinglingly fascinating (how about those robots that conduct symphony orchestras!). But the subject suddenly has special interest for me. It is because this ChatGPT ferment coincides with my very recent purchase of a tennis ball machine.

My swish new ballbot is in almost every respect a true robot. And so its use presents for the thinking user so many of the novel philosophical, ethical, playing-with-our minds issues that arise in all human dealings with AI (artificial intelligence) phenomena and inventions.

And just as the "game" of tennis is so much more than just a game a tennis ball machine is so much more than just a machine.

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Tennis ball machines fling out balls for a human to chase and hit. Mine (my provisional names for her include "Billie-Jean Fling" and, a play on the name of a favourite strong-willed woman of the bible, "Jezeball") does everything a human hitting partner can.

"And in several ways," I tease the increasingly few humans I still hit balls with, "she's preferable to you as a work-out buddy.

"As well as treating tennis with appropriate seriousness and being unbeatably Novak-like at tennis (she never giggles while she hits and never makes an unforced error) she has more personality than you."

And I know I have bought the contraption not only for her usefulness but also because the whole idea of it, of having a tennis-accomplished artificial athlete-friend to play tennis with, appeals and intrigues and puts me abreast of these exciting times.

And there is a sweetly weird strangeness about doing something so normally humanly companionate, hitting tennis balls to and fro, with, instead of a human, a battery-powered something (for I'm not entirely sure, yet, who or what my new friend Jezeball is).

And here in my own growing fondness for Jezeball, in my giving her a human's name, in the ways I revel in her company (I'm plucking up the nerve to ask my wife if she, Jezeball, can come with us on our forthcoming holiday in New Zealand) one sees illustrated the anxious warnings that AI-alarmed commentator-philosophers give.

They warn that our growing insular reliance on robots, devices and a virtual world estranges us from our own species, dehumanises us and dilutes our ability to feel empathy for others.

Those of us who are already reclusive by nature, who find mixing with real people challengingly awkward, who for example have embraced Zoom with enthusiasm for the way in which it enables "meetings" without our needing to actually meet actual people (similarly, inventions like Jezeball are a godsend for those of us who find "social tennis" as hellish as dinner parties and cocktail occasions) must be wary of the genuine allure of artificial companions.

But that concluding sentiment you've just read with rapt interest is not necessarily the opinion of this human columnist. It may only be a sentiment obligingly flung out (like a tennis robot flinging out tennis balls) by ChatGPT, the writers' hotshot friend.