Taxacom: Can GPT-4 replace us

[David Campbell]

"Can GPT-4 replace us?"  The question may be interpreted more than one way.

Is current artificial intelligence able to do a good job of handling
taxonomy?  No; optical character recognition does not yet do a good job of
processing much of the literature; reference databases are both highly
incomplete and error-prone for many taxa; not much has been done to
specifically build AI targeting taxonomic issues rather than general
functionality.

Can current artificial intelligence be used to generate
authoritative-looking data on taxonomy if one doesn't really care about
quality, thereby avoiding the need to hire taxonomists?  Yes.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
Associate Professor, Geology
Department of Natural Sciences
110 S Main St, #7270
Gardner-Webb University
Boiling Springs NC 28017