ChatGPT and why it changes everything
ChatGPT is an extremely intelligent conversational AI released by the company OpenAI on November 30, 2022. Since its release, it's hit the technology world by storm and is starting to spread out to a wide range of demographics and communities. I've been using it daily, and my summed-up opinion of the technology is that it changes everything. First, a little background: ChatGPT is a large language model that's a derivative of OpenAI's previous large language model called GPT-3. Compared to GPT-3, chatGPT can receive longer input, provide longer output, and is more conversational. What is a large language model? I don't think I can explain it as well as chatGPT can. Here's what it came up with:
"A large language model is a type of artificial intelligence that is designed to process and generate natural language text. It is called a "large" language model because it has been trained on a very large dataset, usually consisting of billions of words of text. This allows the model to learn about the structure and patterns of the language and to generate text that is similar in style and content to the training data."
As you can see, chatGPT writes clearly and succinctly. It's been trained on almost the entire internet, including all of Reddit, Wikipedia, publicly available books, blog posts, scientific studies, and much more. After you give chatGPT a question or a "prompt," it comes up with a prediction of the answer. ChatGPT can generate human-like text by predicting the next word in a sequence based on the context provided by the previous words. It uses training data (the internet) combined with sophisticated technology to guide its predictions.
We've all had access to advanced AI for many years with technologies like Siri, Amazon Alexa, and intelligent search results by Google, but chatGPT is different. It's significantly more intelligent than any existing system that the public interacts with. ChatGPT is also eerily well-rounded — it can produce screenplays, give feedback about your writing, generate programming code, teach you about any topic, create recipes, workouts, trip ideas, and much more. Additionally, it remembers both what you've said and what it's told you, so it feels more conversational than any other voice assistant or chatbot. You can ask follow-up questions, and it usually won't just repeat itself - It'll answer the question in new ways to try and explain something differently.
ChatGPT is so good that many people think it will start to take market share from Google. The reason for this is that ChatGPT is excellent at generating one answer that's specific to your exact use case and needs. For example, for many programming queries, ChatGPT is better than Google because it can generate code for your particular use case, whereas when you search on google, you have to sift through links to try and find the code that matches your requirements. For the last week, I've mainly used chatGPT to help me with these programming questions. It's been an incredibly valuable resource when I get stuck on a task or when I want something specific explained to me clearly and concisely. If I had to guess, it's replaced roughly 25% of my Google queries, and I've only had it for a week! A few days ago, I wrestled with a problem for about an hour before turning to chatGPT. After about 15 minutes of going back and forth with the AI, I had a solution to the problem. This was a reminder that I need to turn to chatGPT faster when I get stuck.
You could see a world where chatGPT takes over many queries from not only Google but also professional services. For example, chatGPT is excellent at generating legal documents that a startup might need, like a privacy policy and terms of service. Typically, you'd need to pay a lawyer or online legal service to generate these documents, but now chatGPT will do it for free. Similarly, chatGPT can provide companies and entrepreneurs with other free services like copywriting, sales emails, product ideas, simple web development, and more. The cost of starting businesses will go down as chatGPT get's smarter and smarter. Also, it will make current workers much more productive as they'll be able to get the answers they need faster.
While chatGPT will have many benefits, it's also likely this kind of technology will replace many jobs. Public policy must deal with these repercussions, and more educational options must become available to teach people new skills. Whatever happens, it's going to be an exciting ride.