ChatGPT is Surely Impressive, but there’s much to be Resolved if it’s the Future
ChatGPT, a new AI chat bot, is a new tool from for-profit research lab OpenAI. It’s gaining a lot of buzz and is becoming a pretty big deal. You can type in a question using natural language, and ChatGPT will return a conversational response. The chatbot system is designed to remember past conversations as well, so that it can use them – and information it finds on the internet - to inform future responses.
The tool is pretty knowledgeable, and shows off what a powerful AI system can do. However, OpenAI does say that the chatbot system “may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information,” meaning us humans need not worry – we’re not going to be replaced just yet.
ChatGPT is very impressive nonetheless. The answers it gives are often very useful. For example, you can ask it to explain the “Theory of relativity”. Or, you can ask it to “Write me a poem,” and once it does, ask it to “make it more exciting.” The chatbot can even write a computer code that will develop a program that shows all the ways you can arrange the letters of a word.
The problem? ChatGPT gains its knowledge from patterns in large groups of text taken from the internet, with a little human interaction to make its responses more useful and conversational. Although it can compute way more information in a short amount of time than a human can, it doesn’t mean the information is always going to be correct – as OpenAI warns.
Additionally, it’ll even warn you if it is unable to formulate a response to what you have asked it to do. Mike Krause, a data science director at a different AI company says that “if you ask it a very well structured question, with the intent that it gives you the right answers, you’ll probably get the right answer. It’ll be well articulated and sound like it came from some professor at Harvard. But if you throw it a curveball, you’ll get nonsense.”
Other examples of questions that the chatbot system has been asked include something as goofy as “Write a folk song about writing a rust program and fighting with lifetime errors” to something as simple as “What words rhyme with blue?”
A reporter at CNET asked ChatGPT, “Is it easier to get a date by being sensitive or being tough?” The response: “Some people may find a sensitive person more attractive and appealing, while others may be drawn to a tough and assertive individual. In general, being genuine and authentic in your interactions with others is likely to be more effective in getting a date than trying to fit a certain mold or persona.”
Software developer website StackOverflow has actually banned the use of ChatGPT as a way to answer programming questions. Admins caution that “because the average rate of getting correct answers from ChatGPT is too low, the posting of answers created by ChatGPT is substantially harmful to the site and to users who are asking or looking for correct answers.”
One concern people have regarding ChatGPT is that it could help students cheat in school. The chatbot service not only can assist in research for specific projects, but can be asked to actually do homework or write an essay for the student.
High school teacher Daniel Herman is conflicted about ChatGPT. While he admires the systems capabilities, he also fears it could be a detriment to human learning. “Is this moment more like the invention of the calculator, saving me from the tedium of long division, or more like the invention of the player piano, robbing us of what can be communicated only though human emotion?” he asks.
Dustin York, an associate professor of communication at Maryville University, hopes that schools will use the chatbot as a tool to help students learn. “Educators thought that Google, Wikipedia, and the internet itself would ruin education, but they did not,” York said. “What worries me most are educators who may actively try to discourage the acknowledgement of AI like ChatGPT. It’s a tool, not a villain.”
Is there anything off limits? Yes, there is. ChatGPT is designed to noticed when an inappropriate request is made, and disregard it. This behavior follows OpenAI’s mission “to ensure the artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.” If you ask the chatbot what is off limits, it’ll tell you that any requests “that are discriminatory, offensive, or inappropriate,” will not be acknowledged. ChatGPT will continue, “this includes questions that are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise discriminatory or hateful.” Asking it to engage in illegal activities is another major don’t.
As of right now, ChatGPT is free for now. OpenAI does note however that “we will have to monetize it somehow at some point; the compute costs are eye-watering.”
It’s easy to believe that as this technology evolves, it will be a legitimate competitor to Google. Google supplies you with options, while ChatGPT answers can surpass what Google provides. However, it’s hard to verify the information you’re receiving from the chatbot, whereas with Google, sources are or can be provided. While ChatGPT may be the future and is surely impressive, it’s far from where it needs to be to be the norm.
Story via CNET
