Why everyone is obsessed with ChatGPT, an amazing AI chatbot

There’s a new AI robot in town: chat. And you better watch out.

The tool, from a powerful AI trigger, allows you to type questions using natural language that a chatbot answers in conversational, if somewhat adaptive, language. The bot remembers your thread of dialogue, using previous questions and answers to inform its next answers.

It’s a big deal. The tool seems very knowledgeable if not omniscient – it can be creative and its answers can seem quite reliable. A few days after its release, Over a million people are trying ChatGPT.

But its creator, the for-profit research lab OpenAI, warns that ChatGPT “may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information,” so be careful. Here’s a look at why ChatGPT is important and what’s going on with it.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an AI powered chatbot system OpenAI was released in November To show and test what a very large and powerful AI system can achieve. You can ask endless questions and you will often get a useful answer.

For example, you can ask encyclopedia questions like, “Newton’s laws of motion explained.” You can tell her, “Write me a poem,” and when that happens, say, “Now make it more exciting.” You ask him to write a computer program that shows you all the different ways you can arrange the letters of a word.

And here’s the problem: ChatGPT doesn’t know anything exactly. It is an artificial intelligence system that has been trained to recognize patterns in vast swaths of text pulled from the internet, and then trained further with human help to provide better, more meaningful dialogue. The answers you get may seem plausible and even reliable, but they can be completely wrong, warns OpenAI.

Chatbots have long been of interest to companies looking for ways to help customers get what they need and to AI researchers trying to get a grip on the Turing test. This is the famous “imitation game”. It was proposed by computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950 As a way to measure intelligence: Can a human judge talking to a human and to a computer tell us which is which?

What kinds of questions can you ask?

You can ask anything, although you may not get an answer. OpenAI suggests some categories, such as explaining physics, asking for birthday party ideas, and getting help with programming.

I asked him to write a poem, and he did, though I don’t think any connoisseurs of literature would like it. Then I asked him to make it more interesting, and lo and behold, ChatGPT pumped it up with words like battlefield, adrenaline, thunder and adventure.

One funny example shows how ChatGPT is willing to go in areas where people might be afraid to tread: command to write “A folk song about writing a program that rusts and fighting life’s mistakes”.

ChatGPT’s experience is extensive, and its ability to follow a conversation is noteworthy. When I asked him about the words locked with “purple,” he made a few suggestions, and then when I followed up, “How about pink?” Never miss a moment. (Also, there are a lot of good rhymes for “pink”).

When I asked, “Is it easier to get a date by being sensitive or difficult?” GPT responded in part, “Some people may find a sensitive person more attractive and engaging, while others may be attracted to someone who is tough and assertive. In general, being honest and authentic in your interactions with others is likely to be more effective in getting you a date than trying to fit a mold or persona.” certain.”

You don’t have to look far to find bot accounts that blow people’s minds. Twitter is full of users showcasing their AI prowess Generate technical claims and write code. Some even have it declare that “Google is dead”, along with College essay. We’ll talk more about that below.

Who built ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is the computer brainchild of OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company. Its mission is to develop a “safe and useful” AI system or help others do so.

I’ve done a spray before, first with GPT-3which can generate text that can look like it was written by a human, then DALL-E, who creates what is now called “generative art” Based on the text prompts you type.

GPT-3, and the update to GPT 3.5 on which ChatGPT is based, are two examples of an AI technology called large language models. They were trained to generate text based on what they saw, and they could be trained automatically—usually with massive amounts of computer power over a period of weeks. For example, the training process can find a random paragraph of text, delete a few words, ask the AI ​​to fill in the blanks, compare the result with the original, and then reward the AI ​​system for getting as close as possible. Repeating over and over can lead to a complex ability to create text.

Is ChatGPT free?

Yes, now at least. “We’re going to have to monetize it somehow at some point; the computing costs are staggering,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned Sunday. OpenAI charges for DALL-E art once you pass the basic free usage level.

What are the limits of ChatGPT?

As OpenAI asserts, ChatGPT can give you wrong answers. Sometimes, helpfully, he specifically warns you about his shortcomings. For example, when I asked him who wrote the phrase “The confusing facts transcend the mind of a pangolin,” ChatGPT replied, “I am sorry, but I am unable to surf the Internet or access any outside information other than what I have been trained in.” (The phrase is taken from a Wallace Stevens poem 1942’s The Connoisseur of Chaos).

ChatGPT was willing to take a stab at the meaning of this expression: “a situation in which existing facts or information are difficult to process or understand”. This interpretation confined itself to warnings that it is difficult to judge without more context and that it is only one possible explanation.

ChatGPT answers can seem reliable but they are wrong.

Software developer site StackOverflow blocked ChatGPT answers to programming questions. Officials warned, “Because the average The rate of getting correct answers from ChatGPT is very lowPosting the answers generated by ChatGPT will greatly harm the site and the users who ask or search for correct answers. “

You can see for yourself how good a BS ChatGPT artist is by asking the same question several times. I asked if Moore’s Law, which tracks the computer chip industry’s progress in increasing the number of data-processing transistors, was running out, I got two answers. One optimistically noted continued progress, while the other more somberly noted a slowdown and the belief that “Moore’s Law may be reaching its limits.”

Both ideas are popular in the computer industry itself, so perhaps this ambiguous situation reflects what human experts think.

Along with other questions that don’t have clear answers, ChatGPT often won’t install.

The fact that it provides an answer at all, however, is a remarkable development in computing. Computers are notoriously literal, refusing to work unless you strictly follow syntax and interface requirements. Large language models reveal a more human-friendly interaction style, not to mention the ability to generate answers somewhere between transcription and creation.

What is off limits?

ChatGPT is designed to weed out “inappropriate” requests, a behavior in line with OpenAI mission “To ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”

If ChatGPT asks itself what’s off limits, it will tell you: Any questions that are “discriminatory, offensive, or inappropriate. This includes questions that are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, discriminatory, or hateful.” Asking them to engage in illegal activities is also a no.

Is this better than google search?

Asking a computer a question and getting an answer is useful, and ChatGPT often delivers the goods.

Google will often provide you with its suggested answers to questions and links to websites that it thinks will be relevant. ChatGPT answers often far exceed what Google would suggest, so it’s easy to imagine GPT-3 as a competitor.

But you should think twice before trusting ChatGPT. As with Google itself and other sources of information such as Wikipedia, it is best to check information from the original sources before relying on them.

Checking the validity of ChatGPT answers takes some work because it gives you some raw text without links or quotes. But they can be helpful and in some cases thought-provoking. You may not see something like ChatGPT directly in Google search results, but Google has built its own large language models and is using AI extensively in search already.

So ChatGPT undoubtedly shows the way towards our technological future.