ChatGPT
Short for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a chatbot from OpenAI released on November 30, 2022. ChatGPT uses OpenAI's GPT-3.5, a collection of supervised and reinforced language models built from information the company gathered from the Internet. With this information, a user can chat with ChatGPT to get an intelligent response to almost any request.
ChatGPT was featured as a top term of 2022.
How does ChatGPT work?
At its core, ChatGPT works by following patterns developed by analyzing text it gathered from the Internet, books, and other sources. Using these developed patterns, ChatGPT builds its response to questions by adding one word at a time to its response. For example, if I said "The sky is" and asked you to say the next word, you'd most likely say "blue" because of how many times you've heard the phrase "The sky is blue." ChatGPT works similarly, except instead of using a single person's knowledge, it's gathered knowledge from thousands of people. Its current database has over 300 billion words and over 500 GB of data.
Knowing how ChatGPT generates its responses should give you a better understanding of why most experts indicate ChatGPT is not intelligent. However, because of how much data it has, it can still generate a good response without really understanding what it's saying.
ChatGPT capabilities
Below are a few examples of requests ChatGPT can answer.
Answer all questions
ChatGPT can answer all questions and change how they're answered. For example, you could ask, "What is a computer?" and if its response is too complicated, revise your question to "what is a computer in simple terms" to get a more basic answer.
Remember you and your conversation
In addition to answering questions, ChatGPT remembers all of your queries, can follow up on previous conversations, and be corrected when it answers incorrectly.
Help with programming
ChatGPT can also write code. If you've programmed before, you can use ChatGPT to help with your programming tasks. For example, you could ask ChatGPT to write the code required to get the time in any programming language. ChatGPT can even be used to debug and offer suggestions to improve your code's efficiency.
Create idea lists
If you need a list of ideas for almost anything, it can be done using ChatGPT. For example, you could ask it for a list of 10 ideas for topics in a YouTube video about computers. Using ChatGPT for ideas is a great way to brainstorm new ideas as if you were talking with someone else.
Help with cooking
If you're struggling with finding what to cook or eat, ChatGPT can help. ChatGPT can suggest what to eat, what can be made with certain ingredients, and create a shopping list of ingredients for a particular recipe.
Help with writing
ChatGPT helps with all types of writing and can even be used to write about any subject in any style. For example, you could give the prompt "Write a rap about a computer that wanted to become a human." ChatGPT can also help write an article, cover letter, joke, outline, paper, song, web page, etc.
Simplify and summarize text
If you find something hard to understand, the text can be copied and pasted to ChatGPT to be rewritten and made easier to understand. Questions can also be asked about any inserted text (e.g., the most important keywords of the inserted text or a list of ways it can be rephrased).
ChatGPT limitations
ChatGPT is a new technology, and like other technology, it has limitations. Below lists some of ChatGPT's limitations.
Incorrect information
ChatGPT is only as good as the information it collects and what it decides to use. Since its source of information is the Internet, which can have wrong information, it can answer things incorrectly or respond with biased content.
No source of information
Most of the information provided by ChatGPT is not sourced. So, you're unable to know if the source is from a peer reviewed article or from a single web page.
Recent events and knowledge
ChatGPT is only as smart as when its language models were created. With GPT 3.0, the information gathered was mostly up to 2021. Anything that happened since then is mostly unknown.
Will not answer inappropriate questions
ChatGPT is designed not to answer inappropriate or dangerous questions. In other words, asking a question on how to make a weapon that could be used to harm people would not be answered.
How much does ChatGPT cost?
Basic ChatGPT use is free with an option to upgrade to ChatGPT plus for $20/month. If you upgrade to ChatGPT Plus, you get GPT-4, get faster response times, and all the new beta features currently being developed.
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