ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool driven by AI technology that allows you to have human-like conversations and much more with the chatbot. The language model can answer questions and assist you with tasks like composing emails, essays, and code.
Usage is currently open to the public free of charge because ChatGPT is in its research and feedback-collection phase. As of Feb. 1, there is also a paid subscription version called ChatGPT Plus.
ChatGPT was created by OpenAI, an AI and research company. The company launched ChatGPT on Nov. 30, 2022. OpenAI is also responsible for creating DALL-E-2, a popular AI art generator, and Whisper, an automatic speech recognition system.
It's made a big splash.
"ChatGPT is scary good. We are not far from dangerously strong AI," said Elon Musk, who was one of the founders of OpenAI before leaving. Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief, said on Twitter that ChatGPT had more than 1 million users in the first five days after it launched.
According to an analysis by Swiss bank UBS, ChatGPT is the fastest-growing app of all time. The analysis estimates that ChatGPT had 100 million active users in January, only two months after its launch. For comparison, it took nine months for TikTok to reach 100 million.
You can access ChatGPT simply by visiting chat.openai.com and creating an OpenAI account.
Once you sign in, you can start chatting away with ChatGPT. Get your conversation started by asking a question. Because ChatGPT is still in its research stage, it is free to use and you can ask as many questions as you'd like.
ChatGPT is still free to use. Because of the stir its advanced capabilities have made, many people are flocking to use it. The website operates using a server, and when too many people hop onto the server, it overloads and can't process your request. This doesn't mean you won't ever be able to access it. It just means you should try visiting the site at a later time when fewer people are trying to access it. You can also keep the tab open and just refresh it periodically.
If you want to skip the wait and have reliable access, there is an option for you. As of Feb. 1, OpenAI has a ChatGPT pro plan, ChatGPT Plus, which allows users to have general access even during peak times, experience faster response times, and have priority access to new features and improvements including OpenAI's most advanced LLM, GPT-4. The premium services cost $20 per month.
The model has many functions in addition to answering simple questions. ChatGPT can compose essays, describe art in great detail, create AI art prompts, have philosophical conversations, and even code for you.
My personal favorite is asking the chatbot for help creating basic lists such as packing, grocery, and to-do lists to make my daily life more productive. The possibilities are endless.
ChatGPT runs on a language model architecture created by OpenAI called the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT). The specific GPT used by ChatGPT is fine-tuned from a model in the GPT-3.5 series, according to OpenAI. However, with a subscription to ChatGPT Plus, you can access ChatGPT with GPT-4, Open AI's most advanced model. Generative AI models of this type are trained on vast amounts of information from the internet, including websites, books, news articles, and more.
The language model was fine-tuned using supervised learning as well as reinforcement learning. The use of Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) is what makes ChatGPT especially unique. Through RLHF, human AI trainers provided the model with conversations in which they played both parts, the user and AI assistants, according to OpenAI.
ChatGPT is a language model created to hold a conversation with the end user. A search engine indexes web pages on the internet to help the user find the information they asked for. ChatGPT does not have the ability to search the internet for information. It uses the information it learned from training data to generate a response, which leaves room for error.
Another major difference is that ChatGPT only has access to information up to 2021, whereas a regular search engine like Google has access to the latest information. So if you ask ChatGPT who won the World Cup in 2022, it wouldn't be able to give you a response as Google would.
Despite looking very impressive, ChatGPT still has limitations. Such limitations include the inability to answer questions that are worded in a specific way, as it requires rewording to understand the input question. A bigger limitation is a lack of quality in the responses it delivers -- which can sometimes be plausible-sounding but make no practical sense or can be excessively verbose.
Instead of asking for clarification on ambiguous questions, the model just guesses what your question means, which can lead to unintended responses to questions. Already this has led developer question-and-answer site StackOverflow to at least temporarily ban ChatGPT-generated responses to questions.
"The primary problem is that while the answers that ChatGPT produces have a high rate of being incorrect, they typically look like they might be good and the answers are very easy to produce," says Stack Overflow moderators in a post. Critics argue that these tools are just very good at putting words into an order that makes sense from a statistical point of view, but they cannot understand the meaning or know whether the statements it makes are correct.
Another major limitation is that ChatGPT's data is limited to 2021. The chatbot does not have an awareness of events or news that have occurred since then. Therefore, some prompts will render no results, such as "Who won the World Cup in 2022?"
Lastly, ChatGPT does not provide sources for its responses. So you will never know exactly where the chatbot pulled its information from and can't verify its accuracy by visiting the original source.
ChatGPT is an advanced chatbot that has the potential to make people's lives easier and to assist with everyday tedious tasks, such as writing emails or navigating the web for answers. However, certain technical details have to be figured out before it's widely used to prevent negative outcomes such as the spread of misinformation. In general, AI and ML models rely on lots of training and fine-tuning to reach a level of ideal performance.
Does it mean that AI is taking over the world? Not yet, perhaps, but OpenAI's Altman certainly thinks that human-style intelligence in AI is now not that far off. Responding to Musk's comment about dangerously strong AI, Altman tweeted: "I agree on being close to dangerously strong AI in the sense of an AI that poses e.g. a huge cybersecurity risk. and i think we could get to real AGI in the next decade, so we have to take the risk of that extremely seriously too."
He also noted: "interesting watching people start to debate whether powerful AI systems should behave in the way users want or their creators intend. the question of whose values we align these systems to will be one of the most important debates society ever has."
unveiling - prezentacja
buzz - szum informacyjny
AI technology - technologia sztucznej inteligencji
human-like conversations - rozmowy zbliżone do rozmów między ludźmi
usage - korzystanie
free of charge - bezpłatnie
research and feedback-collection phase - faza badań i zbierania informacji zwrotnych
make a big splash - odbić się głośnym echem
scary good - zastraszająco dobry
one of the founders - jeden z założycieli
fastest-growing app - najszybciej rozwijająca się aplikacja
for comparison - dla porównania
stir - zamieszanie
flocking to use it - korzysta z niego
it overloads - następuje przeciążenie
can't process your request - nie może obsłużyć twojego zapytania
refresh periodically - odświeżać od czasu do czasu
compose essays - pisać wypracowania
fine-tuned - dopracowany, ulepszony
hold a conversation - prowadzić rozmowę
ability to search - możliwość przeszukiwania
training data - dane szkoleniowe
leave room for error - stwarzać możliwość popełnienia błędów
major difference - duża różnica
limitations - ograniczenia
worded in a specific way - sformułowane w szczególny sposób
lack of quality - niezadawalająca jakość
plausible-sounding - brzmiący prawdopodobnie
excessively verbose - nadmiernie rozwlekły
ask for clarification - prosić o wyjaśnienie
ambiguous questions - niejasne pytania
unintended responses - niespodziewane odpowiedzi
high rate - wysoki odsetek
understand the meaning - rozumieć znaczenie
render no results - nie przynosić odpowiedzi
verify accuracy - weryfikować poprawność
negative outcomes - negatywne konsekwencje
spread of misinformation - rozpowszechnianie dezinformacji
take over the world - zawładnąć światem
human-style intelligence - inteligencja zbliżona do ludzkiej
far off - odległy
extremely seriously - bardzo poważnie
align - dopasować, dostosować