ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES
Let’s get straight down to business – who do you think composed this newly released rap song:
He’s a tech mogul, a visionary and a mastermind
In the world of innovation, he’s one of a kind
He’s the founder of SpaceX, taking us to the stars
And with Tesla, he’s revolutionizing the way we drive cars
Was it Eminem, Kayne West, A$AP Rocky or Kendrick Lamar? None of those. The creator of these lyrics is no other than ChatGPT, an AI-driven chatbot that is taking the Internet by storm. This software application is not only a wizard at mimicking human conversation but can write customised job application letters, create original jokes, explain complex topics and phenomena, solve tricky mathematics problems, and give you relationship advice. Giving us a glimpse of the potential of AI technology, ChatGPT is also capable of writing music in almost any genre, writing essays on almost any topic and creating content in multiple languages. And there’s good news for technophiles too – ChatGPT can also write, debug and explain programming code. What’s not to love?
5 DAYS = 1 MILLION
ChatGPT is the brainchild of OpenAI, the American AI research laboratory. In late 2015, OpenAI was founded by Amazon Web Services, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and others in San Francisco, California. By 2019, the organisation had transitioned from a not-for-profit to a capped-for-profit, announcing its intention to commercially license its technologies. A year later, OpenAI released GPT-3, or Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3, a machine learning language prediction model based on trillions of words from the Internet. November last year saw the birth of ChatGPT and the GPT-3-driven chatbot received more than a million signups in five days.
CHATGPT BASICS
GPT-3 operates with 175 billion parameters, 570GB of text data and 300 billion words. That’s what makes its sibling, ChatGPT, so powerful and versatile. On the surface, the technology is straightforward. ChatGPT responds to your requests, questions or prompts and then quickly spews out a response. For example, if you prompted the chatbot to write a rap song on Elon Musk, you’d get something like the lyrics you saw earlier. Unfortunately, ChatGPT is a genderist, as these real-life responses show:
Tell me a joke about women – I’m sure but I am unable to tell jokes that might be considered offensive or inappropriate.
Tell me a joke about men – Why do men like smart women? Because opposites attract.
Besides tunes and jokes, there’s much more to ChatGPT. And the tech driving it is a lot more complicated than it sounds. For simplicity’s sake, let’s just say that it operates on probability, being able to successfully guess what the next word in a phrase or sentence should be.
DOWNLOAD CHATGPT
At the moment, ChatGPT is free to facilitate beta testing and for the chatbot to gather even more data. But OpenAI investors want a return on their investment so a paid pro version is already on the cards. So best to get ChatGPT while you can by following these easy steps:
- type chatopenai.com in your browser
- open an account with OpenAI
- enter an email, password and phone number
- verify your email and phone number
That’s it. You’re ready to rock with ChatGPT.
THE PROS
With ChatGPT, the work that usually takes you hours or even months can be done in minutes – and you don’t need to use Google or watch YouTube videos. Besides its versatility which we’ve already touched on, the chatbot offers these advantages:
- generation of highly coherent and contextually appropriate text
- personalisation of customer service
- quick and easy access to vast quantities of information
- increased productivity of content marketing
- its overall performance can be fine-tuned using supervised learning
- responses can be upvoted or downvoted by users
CHATGPT LIMITATIONS AND CHALLENGES
One of the biggest criticisms of ChatGPT is the ‘hallucination phenomenon, occasionally producing well-constructed and seemingly plausible texts that are actually inaccurate and nonsensical. In addition, the current version only has information about events occurring in 2021 and earlier. As such, users should keep in mind that it has limited knowledge of facts because it uses datasets that are not continuously updated. According to The Guardian, some educational institutions, academics and scientific journals have even banned ChatGPT citing that it infringes IP rights. Researchers will also find ChatGPT severely limiting as it cannot cite references yet.
SECURITY RISKS
Hackers have already started using ChatGPT to create malware. Researchers from CyberArk claim:
“The malware created using ChatGPT could easily evade security products and make mitigation cumbersome with very little effort or investment by the adversary.”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. Recent discoveries show that ChatGPT is also being used to develop new malicious tools, including infostealers, multi-layer encryption tools and dark web marketplace scripts.
MICROSOFT INVESTS AGAIN
In 2019, Microsoft partnered with Matthew Brown Companies and invested $1 billion in OpenAI. Now, following the sensation in the wake of ChatGPT’s release, the Redmond-headquartered tech giant has pledged a further $10 billion to the AI researcher. Part of the deal will enable the deployment of ChatGPT across Microsoft products, including the Bing search engine and its office software such as Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, had this to say about the investment:
“We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratize AI as a new technology platform. In this next phase of our partnership, developers and organisations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolchain with Azure to build and run their applications.”
With ChatGPT being one of the most innovative AI technologies around, Microsoft’s aggressive and game-changing investment puts it way ahead of Google, Apple and the rest.
WILL CHATGPT RULE THE WORLD?
It is unlikely that AI will take over the world in the sense of becoming a dominant force or ruling over humanity. While AI technology continues to advance and become more sophisticated, it is still subject to the control and guidance of its human creators. Additionally, there are many ethical and technical limitations to the development of AI, which will prevent it from becoming a dominant force in the world. Instead of taking over the world, it is more likely that AI will continue to be used as a tool to assist and augment human activity, rather than replacing it altogether. By the way, guess who wrote this piece of text? Clue – it wasn’t me!
GET ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF AUTOMATION
Technology is evolving and advancing at an amazing rate. Some say that it’s alarming but I truly believe it’s awesome. Automation frees up so much of our time giving us more opportunities to be productive and grow. And who wouldn’t take delight in ChatGPT when it can knock weeks and months off your workload? I’ve been in the professional IT business for over 20 years and have seen how rapidly things can change. ChatGPT promises to be yet another marker of technological advancement. If you are ready for automation or want to get even more automated, call me today. We can make it happen.