One Million Users Are Hooked: New AI ChatGPT is Scary Cool
OpenAI just dropped at hot new AI tool, and it’s better than anything we’ve seen so far.
If you’ve been on Twitter lately (surprise – it hasn’t crashed yet!) then you’ve probably heard about ChatGPT. Released to the public on November 30th, ChatGPT already has over a million users.
Writers and developers alike have been stunned and—to be honest—slightly frightened at how powerful this new AI model is. For me, it’s like Christmas came extra early this year, courtesy of OpenAI.
How it Works
In a way, ChatGPT is similar to other AI writing tools that use OpenAI’s GPT-3 model. Like any other generative AI tool for writing, it can create text based on a prompt.
But it can do far more than churn out content.
ChatGPT is fully interactive, in the form of —you guessed it—a chat. You ask ChatGPT a question, and it answers. This makes it a powerful tool for learning…not just for generating text.
For example, here are a few questions you could ask ChatGPT:·
Can you tell me about the history of Mexico?
How do I plant lilies?
Write a LinkedIn post about ways to make your brand design stand out.
What are some famous quotes by George Washington?
ChatGPT is trained in many different languages as well, making it very good at translating. I asked it to translate a sentence into Japanese for me, and was impressed by the result.
I then asked ChatGPT to specifically point out which Japanese word in the translation was the word for “need.” Because ChatGPT understands all of the previous messages in a conversation thread, it could give me a relevant answer that gave more context to my original question.
The chat interface is pretty simple to understand, but how does ChatGPT actually work? Well, when I was drafting this post, I started writing a paragraph to explain. But then I decided to just ask ChatGPT itself. Here’s the explanation ChatGPT gave me:
“ChatGPT is a variant of the popular language model GPT-3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 3) that is specifically designed for conversation. It uses a transformer-based architecture and large amounts of training data to generate human-like responses to input text. In other words, when you give ChatGPT some text, it uses its knowledge of the English language and its understanding of how humans converse to generate a response that sounds like something a person would say. This allows ChatGPT to engage in natural-sounding conversations with people.”
If that went over your head, don’t worry. I asked ChatGPT to rewrite its answer in simpler language:
“ChatGPT is a special program that uses a type of artificial intelligence called a language model to have conversations with people. It's like a virtual assistant that can understand what you're saying and respond in a way that sounds like a real person. When you type something, ChatGPT uses its knowledge of the English language and how people talk to generate a response. This allows ChatGPT to chat with you in a way that feels natural and human-like.”
It really does feel human-like. Sometimes I have to keep myself from writing “thank you” in response to a helpful answer.
Use Cases for ChatGPT
It only took a few minutes of messing around with ChatGPT before I started brainstorming possible use cases. It’s no wonder this model is turning the AI world upside-down, because ChatGPT can basically do everything that other tools built with GPT-3 can…and much more.
These are just a few of the possible use cases for ChatGPT:
Content creation (Generating blog posts, articles, social media posts, etc.)
Translating text into different languages
Conversational language learning
Generating business name ideas
Generating social media post ideas
Solving math problems
Fixing or writing code
Providing travel recommendations
Providing DIY instructions
Generating product or service descriptions for e-commerce websites
Automating customer service responses and FAQs
Generating email or direct mail marketing campaigns
Providing recommendations for products or services
Summarizing long-form articles or documents
Generating creative writing prompts for writers
Generating personalized workout or diet plans
Generating personalized travel itineraries or plans
Providing historical accounts and summaries for educational purposes
Because ChatGPT is adept at generating content as well as performing many other functions, there is a possibility that many of the generative AI tools on the market right now will become obsolete.
I’m particularly excited about ChatGPT’s potential for educational purposes. For example, I recently had a conversation with ChatGPT about the history of Grecian temples in southern Italy. For someone who loves history, ChatGPT is an amazing tool to have on hand.
But it’s not just history. ChatGPT is knowledgeable on almost any subject, from history to literature to programming.
How to Try Out ChatGPT for Yourself
For now ChatGPT is still in a testing phase, so it is available for free.
To access the new tool all you have to do is create an account with OpenAI, or log in to your account if you already have one. Then simply go to chat.openai.com and start a new conversation!
ChatGPT is rocking the AI world, and—for better or worse—is a huge indicator of how advanced AI has becoming.
Although ChatGPT is available for anyone to use right now, there are a few limitations. ChatGPT has only been trained with data up through 2021…meaning it has no knowledge of current events and cannot provide useful answers for anything recent.
Also, as far as I know, there is no way to save your conversation threads once you finish a conversation with ChatGPT. Each time you close out the tool and come back to it, your thread will reset. If you want to save parts of your conversation, you will need to take screenshots or copy and paste the text.
Lastly, considering there are already over a million users, there is a good chance OpenAI will monetize ChatGPT in the near future. So I suggest you try it out for free while you can!
