Understanding What ChatGPT Is and Isn’t

 ChatGPT is a huge phenomenon and a major paradigm shift in the accelerating march of technological progression. It’s a large language model (LLM) that belongs to a category of AI (artificial intelligence) called generative AI, which can generate new content rather than simply analyze existing data. Additionally, anyone can interact with ChatGPT in their own words. A natural, humanlike dialog ensues

 In this chapter, you learn where and how to access ChatGPT, why you should bother, the pros and cons of using it, and whether common fears are justified or wildly off base.

ChatGPT is often directly accessed online by users at https:// chat.openai.com/, but it is also being integrated with several existing applications, such as Microsoft Office apps (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and the Bing search engine. The number of app integrations seems to grow every day as existing software provid ers hurry to capitalize on ChatGPT’s popularity.

Comparing ChatGPT, Search Engines, and Analytics

ChatGPT is just one example, albeit the most publicly well known, of a generative AI model. It represents a huge jump in AI capabilities.

Previously, ranking systems with more limited AI enablement would sort and rank information they found buried in massive datasets. You’ll recognize examples of these ranking systems: search engines such as Google and Bing, recommendation engines used in coupon printing at retail checkout counters, GPS systems such as Google Maps that offer “near me” destination options, and personalized movie recommendations provided by Netflix and other streaming services

Ranking systems shape how we think and function by the deci sions they make in prioritizing vast amounts of information. For example, the Google search engine ranks and returns results from a user’s input of keywords. Generally, users don’t look further than the first three to five top ranking results. This in effect shapes our thinking by limiting the info we ingest and con sider. Companies covet the top ranking spots for certain keyword results, which is why a huge search engine optimization (SEO) industry arose around keywords.

ChatGPT’s capability to provide a unified answer is poised to affect our thinking and behavior to a far greater degree than ranking systems. For example, the prevailing public perception of this single-answer option is that ChatGPT is smarter, less biased, and more truthful than any other source. This perception is wrong.

ChatGPT’s capability to generate new content deviates dramati cally from that of previous software programs with which we are more familiar, such as other AI forms, search engines, chatbots, advanced analytics, and even business intelligence (BI) software. ChatGPT’s accuracy arguably swings more widely than that of the more analytical types of software. Although I’ve seen poor out puts from a BI app, I’ve never seen one outright lie or hallucinate (generated responses that are convincing but completely wrong). But ChatGPT has shown it can do both on occasion.

ChatGPT differs from those other AI-enabled software categories because of its dialog format. Previous chatbots produce responses to natural-language queries by selecting from canned responses, meaning the content is prewritten and a response selection is trig gered by keywords or the content of a user’s question. ChatGPT generates its own response to the user’s prompt. To the unsus pecting eye, the two types of chatbots may appear the same, but they are not.

The interaction with ChatGPT begins with someone typing a prompt in their natural language rather than in machine lan guage. This means you can give the machine a command or ask it a question without using computer code. ChatGPT responds in the

same language you’re using. It continues building on the conver sation as your interactions with it proceed. This threaded interac tion appears as a real-time dialog and creates the semblance of a conversation or a highly intelligent response to your request.

However, the number of ChatGPT responses you can get in a single conversation may need to be limited to prevent this AI model from providing weird responses, making errors, or becoming offensive. To prevent this behavior, Microsoft limited ChatGPT in Bing to f ive responses per user conversation. You’re free to start another conversation, but the current exchange can’t continue past the capped limit.

ChatGPT generates rather than regurgitates content, which means it can make erroneous assumptions, lie, and hallucinate. ChatGPT or any other generative AI model is not an infallible source of truth, a trustworthy narrator, or an authority on any topic, even when you prompt it to behave like one. In some circumstances, accepting it as an oracle or a single source of truth is a grave error.

Understanding What ChatGPT Is and Isn’t 

 The capability to produce a close semblance to human commu nication is primarily responsible for that skin-prickling feeling commonly referred to as the heebie-jeebies. ChatGPT sounds and acts almost too human.

 The interaction between users and ChatGPT has a different feel than that previously experienced with other software. For one, software using earlier iterations of natural-language process ing is generally limited to short exchanges and predetermined responses. ChatGPT can generate its own content and continue a dialog for much longer.

 ChatGPT, like all machine-learning (ML) and deep-learning (DL) models, “learns” by exposure to patterns in massive training datasets that it then uses to recognize these and similar patterns in other datasets. ChatGPT does not think or learn like humans do. Rather, it understands and acts based on its pattern recognition capabilities.

 ChatGPT supports 95 languages as of this writing. It also knows several programming languages, such as Python and JavaScript.

Generative AI also differs from programmed software because it can consider context as well as content in natural-language- based prompts.

Chat in ChatGPT’s name is a reference to its use of natural- language processing and natural-language generation. GPT stands for generative pretrained transformer, which is a deep learn ing neural network model developed by OpenAI, an American AI research and development company. You can think of GPT as the secret sauce that makes ChatGPT work like it does.

ChatGPT does not think like humans do. It predicts, based on pat terns it has learned, and responds accordingly with its informed guesses and prediction of preferred or acceptable word order. This is why the content it generates can be amazingly brilliant or woe fully wrong. The magic, when ChatGPT is correct, comes from the accuracy of its predictions. Sometimes ChatGPT’s digital crystal ball is right and sometimes not. Sometimes it delivers truth, and sometimes it spews something more vile

Unwrapping ChatGPT fears

Perhaps no other technology is as intriguing and disturbing as generative artificial intelligence. Emotions were raised to a fever pitch when 100 million monthly active users snatched up the free research preview version of ChatGPT within two months after its launch. You can thank science fiction writers and your own imagination for both the tantalizing and terrifying triggers that ChatGPT is now activating in your head.

But that’s not to say that there are no legitimate reasons for caution and concern. Lawsuits have been launched against gen erative AI programs for copyright and other intellectual prop erty infringements. OpenAI and other AI companies and partners stand accused of illegally using copyrighted photos, text, and other intellectual property without permission or payment to train their AI models. These charges generally spring from copy righted content getting caught up in the scraping of the internet to create massive training datasets.

In general, legal defense teams are arguing about the inevitability and unsustainability of such charges in the age of AI and request ing that charges be dropped. The lawsuits regarding who owns the content generated by ChatGPT and its ilk lurk somewhere in the future. However, the US Copyright Office has already ruled 

that AI-generated content, be it writing, images, or music, is not protected by copyright law. In the US, at least for now, the gov ernment will not protect anything generated by AI in terms of rights, licensing, or payment.

Meanwhile, realistic concerns exist over other types of potential liabilities. ChatGPT and its kind are known to sometimes deliver incorrect information to users and other machines. Who is liable when things go wrong, particularly in a life-threatening scenario? Even if a business’s bottom line is at stake and not someone’s life, risks can run high and the outcome can be disastrous. Inevitably, someone will suffer and likely some person or organization will eventually be held accountable for it.

Then there are the magnifications of earlier concerns such as data privacy, biases, unfair treatment of individuals and groups through AI actions, identity theft, deep fakes, security issues, and reality apathy, which is when the public can no longer tell what is true and what isn’t and thinks the effort to sort it all out is too difficult to pursue.

In short, ChatGPT accelerates and intensifies the need for the rules and standards currently being studied, pursued, and devel oped by organizations and governments seeking to establish guardrails aimed at ensuring responsible AI. The big question is whether they’ll succeed in time, given ChatGPT’s incredibly fast adoption rate worldwide

Examples of groups working on guidelines, ethics, standards, and responsible AI frameworks include the following:

ACM US Technology Committee’s Subcommittee on AI & Algorithms

World Economic Forum

UK’s Centre for Data Ethics

Government agencies and efforts such as the US AI Bill of Rights and the European Council of the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act.

IEEE and its 7000 series of standards

Universities such as New York University’s Stern School of Business

The private sector, wherein companies make their own responsible AI policies and foundations

As to public opinion, two trains of thought appear to be at play. The first is support for the full democratization of ChatGPT, which is essentially what’s happening now because OpenAI lets users participate in training the model by using it however they want. The second is a call for regulating ChatGPT and other gen erative AI use to curtail crime, scams, cyberattacks, bullying, and other malevolent acts accomplished or scaled up with these tools

ChatGPT is a very useful tool, packing a lot of promise and poten tial to do a lot of good for individuals, societies, governments, and organizations. Indeed, I argue that this is a first step in human augmentation. While ChatGPT is not integrated into the human body, it can be used to augment human thinking, understanding, work, and creative endeavors

Competing with ChatGPT for your job

At the moment, much of the fear people are experiencing about ChatGPT is caused by unknowns striking closer to home. Is ChatGPT going to take my job? Spread disinformation or propa ganda, causing my political party to lose or resulting in a jump in crime or protests in my neighborhood? Will it bring an end to my privacy and dignity? And ultimately, can I defend myself and my career against a machine that’s smarter than I?

We have these fears because ChatGPT appears to be all too famil iar: We have met generative AI and it is us

It so closely resembles human behavior because ChatGPT’s education came in large part from the internet, where humans are known to spew the vilest thoughts, lies, conspiracy theo ries, propaganda, criminal activities, and hatefulness in its many forms. Plus, yes, some true and useful info.

At best, the internet is a mixed bag of human debris, and AI models have already shown a taste for garbage. You might recall the AI chatbot called Tay, which Microsoft tried to train on social media in 2016. It soon went rogue on Twitter and posted inflam matory and racist tweets filled with profanity. Its controversial and offensive efforts to socialize like humans caused Microsoft to kill it a mere 16 hours after its debut.

After that and similar AI training outcomes, and because we know we humans are a scary bunch, the prevailing assumption is that AI acts and sounds like us so it must be equally frightening and potentially more terrifying

Indeed, everything wrong or bad about humans tends to be trans ferred to AI. But the same is true of everything right and good as well as a whole bunch that’s a little of both

ChatGPT can help diagnose illnesses and search for cures. It can help students learn more in highly personalized ways, making their education more efficient and less frustrating. It can help nonprofits find new ways to raise money, cut costs, and drive their causes. Good and helpful examples of potential ChatGPT contributions are almost endless

Even so, there is the near universal concern over the potential arrival of merciless machine overlords. Fortunately, they’re not coming. The type of AI that this fear conjures is general AI or artificial general intelligence (AGI), as it is called in the science community. It exists nowhere outside science fiction and human nightmares. It may be a thing one day, but it’s not here now.

Certainly, ChatGPT is not AGI. It does not think. It’s not smart. It’s not human. It’s software that mimics humans by finding pat terns in our speech, thoughts, and actions. It calculates probabili ties based on those patterns. In short, it makes informed guesses. Those guesses can be brilliant or undeniably wrong, truthful and insightful or devious and a lie. But none of it requires the software to think.

For these reasons and more, ChatGPT can affect or replace some jobs, much like analytics and automation can. But it can’t outright replace all workers because it can’t do all the things humans can do. You still have a competitive edge over ChatGPT.

What might your competitive edge be, you ask? Any number of things: creativity and intuitive intelligence; the ability to find and analyze data that does not exist in digital form; the innate ability to get meaning from word and image conversational context and nuance; and the ability to make neuron connections where none previously existed. The ability to connect the dots or to think out side the box separates human from machine

Human creativity in writing prompts makes ChatGPT produce unique and complex outputs instead of rote generic fare. An intel ligent and creative human makes ChatGPT perform at its best.

Humans also uniquely possess emotional intelligence and empa thy, two powerful abilities that influence people and shape events and outcomes. And the list goes on.

Your brain is also very energy efficient. Three meals a day and a couple of snacks buys a lot of thinking power. Deep- learning models like ChatGPT, on the other hand, suck up enormous amounts of computing power.

The threat to your job isn’t ChatGPT but the people using ChatGPT and other AI tools. It’s up to you to learn how to use these tools to increase your earning potential and your job skills — and to pro tect yourself while using ChatGPT and other AI-fueled services. Reading this book will get you off to a strong start