There was perhaps no greater TV show in the 1970s than The Six Million Dollar Man. The intro alone is pure midcentury gold. Every kid in my neighborhood wanted to be Steve Austin running down the sidewalk in slow motion with his bionic eye, strength, and speed.
However, the Bionic Man may now have finally met his match. Microsoft is pouring billions (our estimate to date is $6 billion) into the ChatGPT bot that is supposed to be “smart” enough to write a teen’s homework essay. (In recent weeks, many administrators are now fearing that ChatGPT will be the true source of all college papers from now on.)
So, this is what $6 billion dollars buy you these days? Is it just me, or were futurists 50 years ago a lot more ambitious? They predicted flying cars, 150-year life expectancies and space travel faster than the speed of light. Now, in 2023, we’re getting machines that can barely tell you baseball scores or write fake term papers!
I have to ask: what would you find more useful: a bionic eye, strength, and speed or a robot that could write a basic essay for 1,000 times more cost? (Okay, I haven’t adjusted for inflation, but you get the point.)
I also have to wonder what was the inspiration for The Six Million Dollar Man. The superfast running speed may have been inspired by the gas shortages of the 1970’s. We all may have been thinking back then that it would have been easier to run to work than sit in gas station lines. Perhaps the bionic bot is getting so much fame because it is very difficult to write a word-only essay when you are used to writing in text-speak and emojis?
Well, our fairly safe prediction is that the bionic bots will one day start to take over the marketing world for click-bait online articles, search-engine-ready website content, and spam email. Worried that this very Tech Essentials article was electronically authored? It wasn’t—for now. And maybe these bots will lead to more consumer-friendly outcomes like improved DMV and cable company call center responses. Not exactly flying cars, but it’s something.
Right now, however, we recommend trying the RMail bionic bot, our own AI that recommends when to send an encrypted email, warns you when you are about to reply to a lookalike domain created to lure you into mis-wiring funds, or alerts you if those with whom you correspond have their email accounts being actively eavesdropped on.
RMail AI™ automates email encryption for any user with Outlook, Gmail or a web email. It also now adds “in-the-moment-of-sending” email encryption compliance. Both transmit email encrypted via RPost Registered Email™ messages, which adds additional value.
As always, feel free to contact us to discuss how RMail and its AI can do what machines are really supposed to do: make your life easier without taking over the world or seeing to it that your college-age child never learns to properly write an essay.
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