Chat GPT – What is it?

Surely over the last month or so you’ll have seen the furore around a new AI tool that’s being tested (in beta) by users across the world. So what is it and what are the implications of its existence in the business community?

It seems like AI or Machine Learning (not to be confused as the same) to enhance automation is becoming ever more prevalent in today’s society and business environments. Often it is met with derision and fear, but in equal measure it’s also recently been seen with excitement and anticipation of late. One thing is for sure though, there will most certainly be an integration with AI in the not too distant future as the technology is improving all the time and ChatGPT is one example of that. At Damson Cloud we’re keeping on top of new technologies and interesting information that can enhance anything in relation to productivity and collaboration.

What is ChatGPT?

Starting off with OpenAI, it was set up back in 2015 as a company (with both profit and non-profit arms) that conducted research in the field of AI to “benefit humanity as a whole”. Since 2015 there have been many iterations of the “AI Chat” as a language model that has benefited from hundreds of billions of input threads across 3 versions before ChatGPT came out in November 2022.

Now with a conversational interface, the platform has been tested by millions of users (it reached 1 million users within 5 days) and has resulted in a plethora of online discussions between users, some critical of the way it responds with incorrect answers or applies no actual “intelligence” to the answers and others praising the ability to gather and display information very quickly. It has its flaws, but it’s something we should all be taking notice of as it marks the first time AI has so widely been discussed between people.

How can it be used?

Most use cases will be for a far more specific search engine. If you ask ChatGPT a question, instead of linking to the answers, it’ll just give you the answer directly. When creating a query on a search engine, to find information there’s an extra step involved. This should be used with caution though, often the wrong answers can be given such as when tested and asked for “the largest country in Central America that isn’t Mexico” it incorrectly stated the answer to be Guatemala when the correct answer is Nicaragua. Also asking anything that requires an opinion means that it will scour the internet for the most commonly held ones. If you then become more specific and give it parameters to work within it still comes up with the same information. Usage cases like this are often brought up as issues within the AI that will eventually be ironed out but as it stands, giving incorrect information does destroy a level of trust that isn’t easily rebuilt as it can be easily dismissed.

So besides being a slightly faster and possibly inaccurate search engine, its other uses can be on the creative side such as writing a song or describing something in more detail. Marketers have tried to write blog posts however Google is very aware of AI generated content and doesn’t rate it as highly, if at all compared to content generated by humans. There’s an obvious way the AI writes. What has found considerable traction however is developers potentially using it between each other to write and explain code. Developers sometimes have a unique reasoning for writing lines of code that can be difficult for other developers or new people on a project to understand, ChatGPT possibly means developer code could be standardised and explained in a way that can be understood by anyone who asks what its function is.

So what next?

The tool will continue to learn and grow its datasets and become more viable over time, but as it stands it’s not quite there when it comes to fulfilling any real requirement for AI besides possibly being of great use for customer services and FAQ’s. The ability for the tool to search and regurgitate information is excellent, however the accuracy of the information it gives out needs to be checked by a human.

It’ll be interesting to see how ChatGPT evolves over the next few years, because in its current state it’s not going to cause many changes, however with some definitive tweaks and as it learns more from users and acquires more data it could be a real asset to people who have specific requirements from a tool like this. There are already integrations within Workspace such as GPT for Sheets and Docs, allowing the seamless usage of AI technology within Google Workspace. 

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