ChatGPT

Understanding chatGPT

So much noise over chatGPT. It’s amazing to watch how this AI throws out answers to the most mundane and twisted questions. It seems to know. But does it? For that, we have to understand a little bit about AI. There are 3 kinds of learning in AI:

• Supervised
• Unsupervised
• Reinforced

Now, chatGPT is a type of unsupervised learning, which means there is no labeling or explicit teaching by humans. It has simply gone through a lot of data and made some inferences. GPT means generative pre-trained transformer, derived from a network called GAN (generative adversarial network). A GAN is in simple terms 2 networks pitched against one another making the guessing better and better till they arrive at a solution.

Are we at an inflection point?

An inflection point is a major turnabout where something revolutionary has happened. For example, it took NetFlix 41 months to get 10 million users, TikTok did it in 9 months, and ChatGPT in 2 months. Such crushing of timelines is only possible with exponential technologies. chatGPT seems to have shaken the status quo. So, what is so great about it? chatGPT is an LLM (Large Language Model) that has been trained by all the data on the internet as of 2021. This very moment it’s becoming better as each day passes. OpenAI, the company behind chatGPT is founded by six members, of which Elon Musk and Sam Altman are part. It received funding from Microsoft in 2019. And lately, also Microsoft has pumped up the funnel. The whole world is shocked at the ability of what this can do and the repercussions on the human race.

Is chatGPT a Search Engine killer?

Looks like it. Come March 2023, Microsoft will be unveiling the chatGPT integration in the Bing search engine (which just has a 9% market share) and its Azure and MS Office tools. Should Google be worried? Yes, of course. Google is used by 90% of users for searching for info on the internet. 60% of their revenues come from Advertising. Hence if the market share goes away, it’s an existential threat to Google. Google had an ‘AI-first’ strategy since 2016. However, they were unaware that they would be challenged by OpenAI, the creator of chatGPT. To face this adversary, Google has made investments in Anthropic (they have a Language Model called Claude) and integrated their Lamda 2 AI into it. This seems to be an AI war that is unfolding. Google cannot afford to lose this game and is already in test mode to launch its AI. The latest news indicates that this model should be out by the end of March 2023. OpenAI is charging 20 USD per month for a subscription, whereas Google will make it free.

What can chatGPT and other AI do?

So, here’s the deal. All creative works like painting, copyrighting, video creation, thesis writing, software development, and many more areas will be affected by chatGPT and other AI. So why learn Math, when you have an assistant like chatGPT? Why search for contextual images, when you have DALL-E-2, which can create it? Why write a piece of code, when you have chatGPT which can spew out immaculate code? And the list goes on and on. Remember that we are looking at the icing on the cake. And that’s what these AI tools are. They cannot reason or do critical thinking. They are just good with mimicry. If you ever wondered that these contraptions are sentient, you have got it wrong. Absolutely not. They are just ‘nice to have tools’. But the fun has just started. Understand that the world we live in is binary. We discovered fire – we used it for cooking and we used it for making weapons. We discovered uranium and we used it for generating electricity and nukes on the other hand.

Today we are at such an inflection point. New technology is like magic. But it needs to be regulated. In the hands of the painter, he/she can churn out a Mona Lisa. In the hands of a criminal, it can be the next form of ransomware. Win some, lose some.

As a planet that has reached 8 billion+ people, we should collectively address the technology challenges, by being in control and only letting the positive aspects come out. The negative side, if it seeps out should be contained by us and regulated. Thus all of us can usher in the myriads of possibilities that these new technologies promise us which may take us to a land of utopia – a kind of Nirvana.

To the unity of all in diversity.

One World!

God Bless!