The ABCs of ChatGPT

As I began my research into ChatGPT and all of the good, bad, and ugly things people have to say about it, I have to say I was tempted to try it out as I organized my thoughts for this article.

ChatGPT has been getting a lot of buzz over the last several weeks primarily due to deep-rooted concerns from educators and the like. It is understandable like any new thing that comes on the scene to be a little bit scared of it. However, we here at Meg Languages are going to take a shot at breaking down some of the key things to know about the infamous ChatGPT.

Welcome to the ABCs of ChatGPT.

 

Let’s start with the source – OpenAI

As their own website will tell you, “OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company.” Their mission is “to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity.”

With investors like Microsoft and American internet entrepreneur, Reid Hoffman, it is safe to say that they and their most recent brainchild are poised to do big things.

 

The Brainchild – ChatGPT

Upon signing up for my own experience, a pop-up politely informed me that the system is “optimized for dialogue” and like all new tech, might not always get it right the first time.

It is intended to be fed a question or prompt and then it will provide answers, follow-up questions, or other information to essentially help the user get what they are looking for.

I am looking to tell you all a little more about ChatGPT, so I decided to conduct a little interview with the subject itself.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Now, this is just too much fun!

But you get the picture – I, the user, type a prompt or question, and boom, the response is generated and received.

Interested in conducting your own interview? You can try it for yourself at https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/.

 

What else should I know?

Well, it’s hard to say exactly what else you should know at this very moment in time. As with all technology, it is evolving. And quickly.

OpenAI is already working on a sibling model called InstructGPT. As this article will tell you, sometimes you just need a little bit of support in how to explain something to a 6-year-old for example, or as it hopes to do – generate “more truthful and less toxic” responses. Maybe OpenAI really can benefit all of humanity.

There are also some competitors that are making their way to the scene – including Google’s own Bard and LaMDA technology. In the case of Bard it is currently being tested by “trusted testers” as Jeff Rumage shows us in his article, Google Introduces Bard, a Conversational AI Competitor to ChatGPT.

In our next article, we will dive into what this could mean for educational institutions and its implications for the future of world language education.