SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — Artificial intelligence has been recent a talking point throughout the country. With deep fakes and voice changers being a hot topic, a new addition, known as ChatGPT, has been added to the mix. ChatGPT is a chatbot, created by Open AI, meant to answer any questions a user has. If a user wanted to know how to bake a cake or needed a template for a resume ChatGPT can provide the recipe and create a template.
The key to ChatGPT’s intelligence is training data. Training data is a set of information the developers have gathered to teach the chat bot. ChatGPT will respond to users based on that set of information. When comparing ChatGPT to a search engine, computer science major Chris Vinciguerra, said ChatGPT isn’t a live website.
“Google has live access to the internet, but ChatGPT in its current form all this stuff its learned it has already learned from what’s called the training data,”Vinciguerra said.”So it gets its set of you know hundreds of thousands of websites and it learns on that training set so when you’re interacting with it it’s not doing anything on the fly”.
A search engine like Google is a live website meaning it is constantly updated with new information. If new information is revealed, about a topic, it can be found immediately. However, ChatGPT can only give an answer reliant on the training data. Regardless, if the data is old or new. Therein lies the problem. If the training data is compromised, then so is ChatGPT’s response. Visiting professor, Caroline Riby, said a concern about the chatbot is bias.
“What you get back is what its accumulated. Sometimes it’s not always good. Sometimes the answers are wrong. Sometimes the answers can be racist,” Riby said.”Um it’s sort of a garbage in, garbage out type of system”.
While there are some cons about ChatGPT, there are also some benefits. Vinciguerra said it’s been helpful with his work.
“One of the things it’s really good at um is helping you program,” Vinciguerra said.”So, you can ask it like really complicated questions that it might take a person even an hour to figure out and it would give you I would say 80% of a good answer”.
Although the chatbot is controversial for its disadvantages, Open AI doesn’t plan to stop its development. Currently, the company is working on an updated version, called GPT-4. The new model will have a higher accuracy rate than its predecessor. One method involves a creative use of pictures. If a user wants to learn how to do something, they will be allowed to upload a photo where the chat bot will give them instructions, based on the image. With these developments it’s clear that Chat GPT was only the beginning.
