What is OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot and why has it gone viral?

The chatbot ChatGPT provides grammatically correct and well-read responses, though some have noted a lack of context and substance.

                                                                  Image Credit - Digital Floats

OpenAI, best known for its AI-based text-to-image generator Dall-E, introduced a new chatbot called ChatGPT last week. ChatGPT is a 'conversational' AI that will answer questions like a human—at least, that's the promise and premise.

So, for example, one can ask ChatGPT for advice on how to plan a birthday party, an essay on why parliamentary democracy is superior, or even a fictional meeting between two well-known personalities. ChatGPT has gone viral due to the type of responses it generates, and it is now seen as a replacement for much of the daily mundane writing, from emails to college-style essays. But what exactly is ChatGPT, and is it a viable replacement for humans? We will explain

How does ChatGPT work? What are the steps to sign up?

OpenAI has created ChatGPT, a start-up focused on artificial intelligence and its potential use cases. Microsoft, Khosla Ventures, and Reid Hoffman's charitable foundation are among OpenAI's notable investors. The company is led by Greg Brockman as chairman and president, and by Sam Altman as CEO. Ilya Sutskever is Open AI’s chief scientist.

ChatGPT is able to respond to "follow-up questions" as well as "admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests," as described by OpenAI. It is based on the GPT 3.5 series of language learning models (LLM) produced by the company. Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT) is a type of computer language model that uses deep learning to generate text that is human-like from inputs.

What has sparked so much interest in ChatGPT?

The variety of responses provided by ChatGPT is what has sparked so much discussion. It is being viewed as an alternative to basic emails, party planning lists, CVs, and even essays and homework for college students. As demonstrated by the examples, it can also be used to write code. Twitter screenshots demonstrated how the chatbot could write four-page essays, solve math problems, and even spot code errors.

Even OpenAi acknowledges that the AI's responses have some flaws. It mentions that the chatbot might occasionally respond with "answers that are plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical." A response can be downvoted or upvoted by users. OpenAI also mentions that "biases in the training data..." cause the chatbot to occasionally overuse certain phrases.

So, when it comes to writing, will ChatGPT take over from humans? Although some have opined that the chatbot's responses lack context and substance, this is largely true. The chatbot's responses are grammatically correct and read well.