Since the end of last year, the internet has been in a frenzy as OpenAI launched the ChatGPT AI. Since its launch, it has had over 1 million users. Among many other things, the AI chatbot is potentially capable of passing US medical licensing exams, writing job applications, and writing advertisements.
One of the most intriguing (and perhaps alarming) things about ChatGPT is that it sounds just like a human and you can interact with it as if you are texting a friend.
What exactly is ChatGPT?
GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, and ChatGPT is a natural language processor. San Francisco based AI company OpenAI trained the AI using Reinforcement Learning. Humans interacted with the AI, providing both prompts and answers. Answers were then ranked by quality, and the process was repeated on an iterative basis. This process makes ChatGPT different from earlier iterations, because it sounds just like a human.
The model itself was trained on a significant amount of text and data from various sources. This included 570GB of text.
What might be some uses for ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is able to provide very human-like responses to questions quickly, utilising its extensive knowledge bank. However, given the large nature of the model, it is resource intensive.
There are also some limitations:
- as a natural language processor, ChatGPT cannot access external links and its knowledge is limited in time to facts occurring in 2022 or before;
- quality of output is limited to the quality of the training and data it has received;
- ChatGPT is sensitive to inputs, and might answer questions differently depending on the phrasing;
- there is some bias in the model, as trainers preferred longer answers that looked comprehensive the output is sometimes verbose;
- it is possible for the AI to give harmful instructions.
Demo
I asked ChatGPT to write the next edition of my Future Insurer newsletter, you can watch it below and view the full newsletter here:
Stay tuned for our next newsletter where we will explore the legal, ethical and insurance issues of ChatGPT. Make sure to subscribe to this website.
