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Israeli president’s speech at hi-tech conference partially written by ChatGPT

President Herzog praised Israel’s “significant impact on the global stage” at the Cybertech Global conference in Tel Aviv.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

President Isaac Herzog addressed a cybertech conference in Tel Aviv Tuesday with a pre-recorded speech written partially by a computer program.

Speaking on the last day of the three-day the Cybertech Global conference in Tel Aviv, he praised Israel’s “significant impact on the global stage.”

The president said he was “truly proud to be president of a country that is host of the innovative hi-tech industry. Israel is consistently at the forefront of technological advancement [with] its achievements in cybersecurity, AI [artificial intelligence], and big data.”

He talked of high-tech achievements that are changing the world, saying, ”Not only are machines taking on tasks which once only humans could perform, they are performing tasks which humans could never dream could be done – pushing the boundaries of the imagination and of what is possible.”

He revealed that this included having the opening and closing parts of his speech written by a chatbot called ChatGPT instead of a human being.

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence tool that allows people to ask questions in natural language and give detailed answers within seconds on almost any subject one can think of. Mistakes do creep in, as its answers depend on the information it has been programmed with, but most of the time, they are correct.

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Unlike most chatbots, it can also “follow up” an interaction because it remembers previous prompts from the same conversation. But more than that, it can be original. ChatGPT can compose music, author poetry – and write speeches.

The tool was invented by OpenAI, an American research laboratory founded in 2015 with such partners as Microsoft and Amazon Web Services “to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity,” as per its website.

Herzog did remind his tech-minded audience that “we must never forget the human spirit. No computer… can ever replace human DNA. Hardware and software cannot replace human will.”

The conference is a business-to-business networking platform where attendees hear about high-tech threats, innovations and solutions in sectors ranging from defense to agriculture, critical infrastructure to health.

Illustrating the importance of the symposium, the heads of three Arab states’ cybersecurity departments attended – the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco – as well as their counterparts from Israel and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Cyberwarfare and cybercrime were two of the most important topics addressed.

Former IDF intelligence Unit 8200 chief Nadav Zafrif discussed how the cyber sphere was becoming a real battlefront, stating that it has been “part of the toolkit” used over the past year in the Russia-Ukraine war.

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Several leaders in the industry urged governments to protect their most critical services and secrets, whether military or industrial, as hackers are becoming more and more sophisticated – and successful – in their attacks.

A full nine percent of the world’s economy, $8.4 trillion, was lost due to those illegally accessing computer systems, Microsoft Corporate Vice President Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk told her listeners.