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ChatGPT is an AI-based service wrapped inside a chat interface.
It can keep conversational context, take feedback, and challenge inappropriate requests.
As of November 2024, ChatGPT is attracting over 200 million users per week.
ChatGPT responds in a manner similar to human conversations, providing a natural tone and maintaining context.
It has tons of use cases in just about every domain.
ChatGPT is a sure-shot productivity booster with a generous free version for lightweight users.
ChatGPT Versions
OpenAI has regularly updated its GPT models since the inception of GPT-1 in 2018.
Heres a brief mention of its popular GPT updates, along with their strengths and limitations.
[2]The researchers used Transformer as their model architecture, which was released by Google in 2017.
GPT-1 is not directly available to the general public.
However, you’re free to use it on third-party platforms, such asHugging Face.
Karma is a Reddit parameter awarded to its users indicating their content popularity based on upvotes and downvotes.
However, OpenAI didnt release its trained model, citing potential malicious applications.
Instead, it allowed researchers to try a much smaller model.
[5]Users could also try the community-poweredGPT-2 on Hugging Face.
However, as reported by media outlets (such as The Verge, The Register, etc.
), its limitations would surface in longer conversations.
[7]GPT-2 would lose focus and drift off the subject of interest.
But thats understandable since the GPT-2 context window was a mere 1024 tokens (~ 770 words).
Overall, GPT-2 was a tenfold (in terms of training data and parameters) upgrade over GPT-1.
It paved the way for a generalist model development without explicit, task-oriented training.
GPT-3 demonstrated excellent performance on NLP tasks in zero, one, and few shots controls.
GPT-3 was as effective as fine-tuned and supervised models of that time, especially in answering questions and translation.
It could also successfully do elementary math (addition, subtraction, and multiplication) with small numbers.
However, GPT-3 still fell short in tasks like sentence comparison and common sense physics.
Still, it was a significant upgrade over its predecessor, making even the biggest tech giants curious.
In September 2020, Microsoft acquired an exclusive license of GPT-3.
[9]However, others could still access GPT-3 via OpenAIs public-facing API.
There are community-powered instances too (on Hugging Face) of every OpenAI model, including GPT-3.
It was none other than OpenAIs super bot, ChatGPT.
They called the resulting models InstructGPT.
[10]
ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) was a sibling model to InstructGPT.
The major differentiator of the chat interface was the conversational way of obtaining results.
ChatGPT could also take feedback, oppose indecent queries, and own up to its mistakes.
Despite the advances, ChatGPT would confidently respond with inaccuracies at times.
Slight changes in input would lead to entirely different outputs.
GPT-4 (2023)
OpenAI released GPT-4 in March 2023.
OpenAI also fine-tuned it with RLHF.
Barring a few subjects (such as AP English Literature and Composition), GPT-4 firmly stood its ground.
Besides, OpenAI evaluated GPT-4 on traditional benchmarks, such as MMLU, HellaSwag, HumanEval, and more.
The results showed GPT-4 significantly outpacing existing language models and state-of-the-art (SOTA) models.
OpenAI offered GPT-4 within ChatGPT and via its API.
The major distinction that users felt was the ability to input image prompts in addition to text.
GPT-4 could read image contents, analyze, and respond to the combined (text + visual) input.
However, GPT-4 had limitations similar to those of its predecessors.
It wasnt 100% accurate (well, no AI is!
), and would hallucinate once in a while.
Likewise, it had difficulty making sense of complex reasoning and was overly trustful.
It would confidently produce nonsensical results, and its responses clearly reflected bias from its training data.
It offers priority access to the leading GPT models with faster response times.
As of now, ChatGPT Plus retails for$20/month.
OpenAI also offers a Team subscription starting at$25/user/month.
GPT-4 Turbo also fared well in generating responses in specific data formats, such as XML and JSON.
The Turbo update could call multiple functions in a single message, which previously needed multiple calls.
[12]Function calling is useful in connecting models with external applications, tools, and databases.
It can have extensive applications in IoT, among other things.
This update also allowed users to set a seed parameter and get consistent outputs.
Its also faster and has a 50% cheaper API.
It can retain up to 128K token context and has access to data till October 2023.
Besides, GPT-4o is internet-connected, allowing it to fetch real-time information.
GPT-4o was released to free users as well.
However, paid subscriptions enjoy a 5x higher message cap.
GPT-4o with Canvas
OpenAI introduced GPT-4o with Canvas in October 2024.
This update was aimed at users who rely on ChatGPT for writing and coding.
Canvas opens a two-panel interface, allowing collaboration between the user and ChatGPT itself.
One can highlight sections to give pin-point feedback and get the GPT to refine that specific portion.
The Canvas panel works much like a word editor.
It lets users continue manually or prompt ChatGPT (on the left) to copy-paste content on the right.
GPT-4o with Canvas also shows document history and enables users to go back to previous versions.
Canvas opens up automatically, or you might prompt use canvas or start canvas to launch the specialty interface.
These models undergo an internal thinking process before responding.
GPT-o1 preview is configured for advanced problems in the Science and Math disciplines.
It scored 83% in the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO) compared to the 13% of GPT-4o.
Likewise, it ranked in the 89th percentile in Codeforces competitions.
Who Created ChatGPT?
ChatGPT was created by OpenAI.
Founded in 2015, OpenAI is the San Francisco-based AI company behind ChatGPT.
What Is ChatGPT Used For?
Is ChatGPT Free?
ChatGPT has a free version with limited access and features for beginners.
What Are the Advantages of ChatGPT?
Due its versatility, ChatGPT is beneficial for (a multitude of) industries and individuals alike.
The following are a few core qualities that make ChatGPT achieve this feat.
Improved User Engagement
ChatGPT can offer personalized and instant responses to user queries.
Its similar to having a 24/7 dedicated assistant for every single user, which is otherwise rarely possible.
Besides customer support, ChatGPT can provide product recommendations and collect feedback.
The best ChatGPT attribute is that it is highly interactive and talks in everyday conversational language.
I mean, you seldom notice that youre talking to an AI after all.
Overall, ChatGPT has set extremely high standards of what can be achieved with automated personalization and user engagement.
Accessibility for Non-technical Users
Prior to generative AI, using any form of technology required expertise.
I agree; some degree of automation is already available.
Plus, ChatGPT can keep context, which is entirely missing in current user experiences.
What Are the Limitations of ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a revolutionary AI tool.
However, it wouldnt be wise to assume its perfect.
Below, Ive mentioned a few aspects ChatGPT still struggles with.
A few users even have a go at make ChatGPT free of the built-in OpenAI safety mechanisms.
Dependence on Training Data Quality
ChatGPT lacks a mind and conscience of its own.
All its amazing creations are still limited to its training data and internet information.
This makes ChatGPT a potentially dangerous tool in the wrong handssomeone who overrelies on its abilities.
Moreover, irrespective of the source authenticity and information refinements, training datasets still suffer from biases.
Now, ChatGPT can remember a books worth of information in a single conversation.
But there is a limit to context, however large.
So, users must remain aware of this restriction.
What Are the Best ChatGPT Alternatives?
Claude
AnthropicsClaudeis my favorite ChatGPT alternative.
Personally, I prefer Claude over its ultra-popular competitor for preparing summaries and reasoning.
It has a beautiful interface and supports text, images, and document processing.
Users can select from a handful of presets (Normal, Concise, Explanatory, and Formal).
Besides, it’s possible for you to upload text to create custom styles.
What it currently lacks is internet access, which means Claudes responses cant have real-time information.
Also, it cant create images or take audio/video as inputs as of yet.
Copilot
Copilotis Microsofts contribution to the generative AI space.
Unlike ChatGPT, Copilot is heavily integrated with Microsofts own search engine, Bing.
Consequently, its mostly tailored to search the web (via Bing) than anything else.
This makes Copilot more of anAI search enginerather than a ChatGPT competition.
Still, its good at what it does.
In addition to text, Copilot can create and process images and accept audio inputs.
It can process text, images, and audio, and replies likewise.
Gemini outputs 3 drafts with every response, and users can still modify it for length and tone.
Gemini is free to use.
What Are the Ethical Concerns Associated with ChatGPT?
The AI fraternity is abuzz about the ethical implications of using generative AI tools like ChatGPT.
I will discuss the major concerns, including plagiarism, privacy, and AI replacing the human workforce.
Plagiarism
ChatGPT responses arent unique.
It draws from the data and patterns therein, and its outputsmore or lessmatch the existing information.
While it isnt plain simple plagiarism, it would be wrong to say it isnt paraphrasing.
In its present form, ChatGPT scrapes a few websites and rehashes the details in natural conversational language.
[17]There are many more lawsuits in this regard, with a few still ongoing.
The law will take its course.
But I suggest looking elsewhere for 100% unique content, as no AI tool has such capabilities yet.
Replacing Human Workforce
Entry-level businesses dont generally have the budget to hire experts for all their tasks.
Cutting costs on anything non-core is common, and creative work (copywriting, graphic design, etc.)
often falls into that category.
AI Tools like ChatGPT (Midjourney, InVideo AI, etc.)
Though this tilts finances in their favor, it deprives beginners of the exposure they need to become experts.
Moreover, its not only with the creatives.
Although AI tools are evolving to deliver better results, they need the right users to provide accurate outputs.
While AI may not replace humans, humans who know how to use AI can replace humans who dont.
Data Privacy
Generative chatbots like ChatGPT breathe on data.
This is evident from the fact that ChatGPT lacks an incognito mode.
Data sharing is turned on by default (except for Teams and Enterprise editions).
Youll have to find your way to toggle the opt-out button, something most OpenAI customers will simply forget.
Ive made sure to opt out of sharing my data.
If youre concerned about your data as well, Id recommend looking into your accounts ChatGPT prefs immediately.
The other privacy option is Temporary Chat.
Whatever OpenAI may call it, this isnt user data privacy in its purest form.
If its any consolation, other AI chatbots also collect your data in some way or another.
Misinformation
ChatGPTs rapid pace allows scamsters to misguide audiences with genuine-looking content.
or public figures and general individual (including relationships and social life).
Overall, these AI developments have made it challenging for the average user to discern originality from forgery.
No Accountability
ChatGPT wont tell you when its wrong or unsure of its creations.
Its programmed to reply in a friendly and confident manner.
Still, no AI can be 100% safe, and human oversight is critically important.
Except for Teams and Enterprise subscriptions, OpenAI uses ChatGPT data by default to train its AI models.
However, users (free and paid) can turn data sharing off in the app options.
Head over toSettings > Data Controlsandturn offthe toggle saying Improve the model for everyone.
Besides, ChatGPT can also list job-specific skills and mention possible interview questions to prepare for.
ChatGPT results are simply rehashed versions of its training or internet data.
Logically, that data belongs to an individual or a group.
Therefore, using ChatGPT data as your own is considered plagiarism.
In fact, OpenAI has put this disclaimer at the bottom of its interface: ChatGPT can make mistakes.
Therefore, its imperative to check ChatGPT outputs for inaccuracies.
There are many ChatGPT detectors available online, with various detection accuracies.
References
1.ChatGPT / OpenAI Statistics: How Many People Use ChatGPT?
HDSR16.Microsofts Strategic Stake in OpenAI Unlocks Unique Investment Avenues -Yahoo!
Finance17.8 Daily Newspapers Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I.
The New York Times18.Google Searchs guidance about AI-generated content Google Search Central
