Holy or Unholy? Interview with Open AI’s ChatGPT

In this paper, OpenAI's ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), also known as GPT-3, a machine-learning model that has the ability to generate human-like text, was employed as an interviewee instead of a human subject. The scope of the interview was the impacts of OpenAI's GPT on higher education and academic publishing. Particularly, several questions about the impacts of OpenAI's ChatGPT and other AI-based machine learning models on the hospitality and tourism industry and education were asked. The originality of this paper derives from having the ChatGPT as an interviewee. ChatGPT stated that its use helps instructors delegate monotonous tasks such as grading and focus on more intellectual tasks, and students may utilize ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas. ChatGPT confesses the risk of diminishing critical thinking for students in the case of over-reliance on ChatGPT as well as educational inequalities. For academic work, ChatGPT addressed it cannot be a substitute for human creativity and intellectuality because originality and novelty lack in outputs generated by ChatGPT. The tourism and hospitality industry can benefit from ChatGPT for certain things such as personalized services, content creation, and many more.