THE FUTURE OF A.I. IS HERE

by Ben Lake

We have been hearing about artificial intelligence since, well, we were promised those flying cars decades ago. In fact, the term was originally coined in the mid-1950s and has been used and misused by everyone from science journalists to movie producers. But lately the newest extension of artificial intelligence is into our web browsing and computing experiences.

The shot that caught the attention of many tech watchers most recently was the release of a “language model” called ChatGPT in November 2022. Developed by a company called OpenAI and funded by the likes of Microsoft, Elon Musk, and the co-founder of LinkedIn, it aims to “ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.” A lofty goal, to be sure. But what is it, really?

WHAT IS IT?

ChatGPT is trained on a massive amount of text data1 and is capable of generating human-like responses to a wide range of prompts. This makes it a useful tool for tasks such as language translation, text summarization, and conversation generation. With its ability to understand and respond to context, ChatGPT can provide accurate and relevant information quickly and efficiently. Overall, ChatGPT is a powerful and versatile language model that has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with machines.

Guess what? That paragraph above was entirely written by ChatGPT itself, when I fed it the prompt “Write an article about ChatGPT in 100 words or less.” You can see how this can be much more than a better search engine. Its ability to understand human language and respond in a coherent way is impressive, if also a little unnerving. But it doesn’t stop with general queries: ChatGPT can also make shopping suggestions, travel plans, menu and grocery shopping lists, and debug computer code.

It does have limitations, though. Its use can be throttled due to the tremendous volume of computing power used by the queries, and its database is current only through 2021 for now. You also have to create a free account to use it. And it’s not perfect, either. Depending on how the question is asked, results can seem hollow or vague. Nonetheless, it’s utility is causing quite a stir in the tech world.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine is soon going to leverage the power of ChatGPT to provide more natural search results, but the beta release is only open to a limited number of users at the moment. And not one to give up its search crown easily, Google announced at nearly the same time its own AI-based search tool, nicknamed Bard.

You can check out ChatGPT for yourself at this link: OpenAI.com/blog/chatgpt/

And while you’re there, take a look at the other mind-blowing tool “DALL-E”, which, for a fee, can create brand new images from a natural language description: Openai.com/dall-e-2/

It’s my opinion that we are transitioning from a world where artificial intelligence is coming out of research labs and behind-the-scenes to become a much more user-focused product. It won’t be too long before the way we currently search the Internet is seen as quaint and old-fashioned. My hope, though, is that the great minds behind this technology are building in controls to keep AI a meaningful tool for humans and not the tinderbox for the downfall of our society.

Ben is the owner of Open Road Network Services, a Georgetown-based business providing honest, reliable, and affordable technology support to individuals and small businesses. He is particularly passionate about educating and empowering his clients to become more comfortable with technology. • 512-942-7623 • OpenRoad.network

1: FROM THE EDITOR: ChatGBT uses the "corpus" of the Internet—the vast collection of textual, visual, and multimedia content available online. Every piece of data you upload to the web, from code to profile photos, will eventually be assimilated into the corpus. Laws are being written every day to control its use and the specifics of what is or will remain intellectual property.