A few months ago, I fell down the AI rabbit hole while doing research for a piece on AI companions. Simple “dumb” chatbots, the text-to-image trend and associated discussions, and GPT-3 are just a few examples. But on 30 November, the company OpenAI gave us ChatGPT, also known as GPT-3.5, and everything changed.
Imagine having a programme that can write and debug code, help you with research, or build a Twitter bot without knowing anything about programming. Or that can let you write film scripts, essays, be your personal assistant, provide mental support, create marketing or SEO strategies, and much more. ChatGPT is already making this possible today.
What is ChatGPT?
It is a large language model developed by OpenAI. Since its founding in 2015, the company has made huge progress, with the recent example being the DALL-E 2 image generator. In 2019, OpenAI raised $1 billion from Microsoft and now has a valuation of $20 billion. Since its launch, ChatGPT has become an internet phenomenon. In just five days, it surpassed 1 million users. By comparison, Netflix took 41 months, Facebook 10 months, Instagram 2.5 months. The ability to ask open-ended questions on any topic and get an answer that is not pre-coded clearly has a huge market with almost unlimited demand.
Education versus ChatGPT
The use of ChatGPT raises questions about our education system. The old view that education is mainly a memory test seems to be fast becoming obsolete.
Robert Hanson, professor of economics at George Mason University, ran a test. He anonymously graded a series of economics essays, including one written entirely by ChatGPT. This ChatGPT essay scored similarly to the bottom 20 students in his class - not top-notch work, but still remarkable. An overall AI performing as well as a weak university student is extraordinary. And progress in AI is exponential. In two years, the situation may look very different.
In programming, ChatGPT is already strong. This in itself could be a game changer. For instance, a user can also use ChatGPT as a personal trainer: it calculates your daily energy consumption, sets a calorie deficit, creates a meal plan, recipes, a weekly overview and a shopping list.
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