What is AI Writing?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is taking the world by storm, one of the primary forms being AI chatbots. What is a chatbot? A chatbot is a computer model that is designed to simulate a conversation with another human while being run by artificial intelligence. In November of 2022, one of the biggest advancements in artificial intelligence was released— ChatGPT. ChatGPT is able to write entire essays and text in many other forms of output(like song lyrics and play scripts) in seconds, explain practically anything, and even write code.

First off, the main software for chatbots is GPT, a Generative Pre-trained Transformer, which was developed by OpenAI. But… How does AI writing and GPT work? AI writing works by using a process called machine learning that’s based on patterns from a large dataset of writing samples. This starts by creating a dataset based on anything that humans have written. The datasets then have all punctuation removed during processing, and the AI examines the text and begins to pick up on common patterns of writing. The AI will then be trained to be able to generate responses based on certain inputs and adapt them for different output forms, like essays or poems. provide suggestions, and write code. These are some of the most common uses, but the other popular use is writing essays. ChatGPT is a software model that usually produces outputs in the form of an essay, as that’s the most natural way for this specific model to write. This makes it great for writing essays, which is unfortunately something that a lot of kids are currently doing in school.

ChatGPT can be used in several ways, three of which are listed on OpenAI’s main page; “Explain quantum computing in simple terms,” “Got any creative ideas for a 10-yearold’s birthday?,” and “How do I make an HTTP request in Javascript?”

Essentially, it’s saying that ChatGPT can simplify complicated concepts or terms,

While these AI writing programs are revolutionizing the modern world, they have their fair share of downsides as well. One downside of these programs is that they don’t always produce accurate information. ChatGPT, for example, was developed and trained up until September of 2021, so while it may know some things past September, it is significantly more likely to produce accurate information from before that time. OpenAI has recently developed GPT 4, the next generation of GPT that can now take the input of images, generate faster responses, and output much more accurate responses.

Benjamin Andrew is a research engineer at the Southwest Research Institute, and focuses on improving “computer vision, machine/deep learning, and robotics, especially autonomous vehicles.” He decided to pursue a career with AI because he “was always interested in making things and learning how things work,” and “video games inspired [him] to learn about computers and how to program them to make useful tools or art.” He notes that if you want to have a career in AI, you should learn some programming and problem-solving, be solid with math, primarily statistics, but most importantly, actually have an interest in both of these and enjoy doing them. He also suggests that you should start early, so you don’t have to do these all at the same time.

Louis Bouchard is a Ph.D. Student, artificial intelligence Youtuber, podcaster, and head of community at Towards AI. His opinion on AI is that “it is becoming more and more powerful but is also quite simple underneath,” and currently “the more human in the loop we have, the better. Algorithms are nothing that special but engineering and social intelligence is.” As a kid he wanted to pursue a career in AI because he “loved mathematics and always wanted to become a researcher,” but now, it’s because he is “excited to work on an applied form of mathematics and productize it.” He suggests that people going into the field of AI should prioritize getting good at programming and learning to understand APIs (Application programming interfaces), as well as having a solid background in math and coding.