Beyond the Binary: Exploring the Nuances of Language with ChatGPT

As the evolution of artificial intelligence continues, one of the latest technological breakthroughs is Chat GPT, reaching 100 million users within 2 months of its launch. Developed by OpenAI, Chat GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a language model that can interact with humans as if engaging in natural conversation, with the ability to generate human-like responses to various prompts. The development of Chat GPT started with the creation of GPT-1 in 2018, followed by GPT-2, GPT-3, which has over 175 billion parameters, and finally GPT-4, the largest and most advanced language model to date. According to Similar web, the website has been visited a total of one billion times as of February 2023 and gets about 25 million daily visits.

Source: www.cnbctv18.com

The increasing popularity of ChatGPT has allowed the platform to surpass other social media apps including Instagram and TikTok which took 2.5 years and 9 months, respectively to cross 100 million users, according to an article published by the Mint.

Source: www.tooltester.com

Chat GPT has not only been able to garner attention from its users but also from its competitors. The software had one of the biggest product launches in history by drawing one million users in a short span of just five days after its unveiling. The race for AI supremacy has begun with tech companies combining their forces with some of the brightest computer science minds together. With startups such as Anthropic and Character ai building their own AI challengers, the big battle is between Microsoft and Alphabet. Since it takes vast amounts of data to train these systems and outputs, Microsoft invested $10 billion in Chat GPT in February to enhance its Bing search engine and go after those profits. In a preemptive counterattack, Google launched its own AI software, Bard, which gave an incorrect answer in a promotional video leading to a $100 billion fall in value in the stock market for the parent company Alphabet and displeased investors.

While some people feel that ChatGPT and the future have arrived, others claim that it still needs a lot of work both in terms of the results it can deliver and also its ethical use. Either way, it has created a lot of excitement and anxiety among people.

“ChatGPT is incredibly limited but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Twitter in December 2022.

ChatGPT has the potential to significantly impact several industries including IT, education, healthcare, business and finance, and more but a lot more needs to be done to make it truly catalytic.

For example, in the IT sector, Chat GPT can help increase efficiency in Technology departments by automating repetitive tasks like code restructuring and bug fixing but it may not always be able to produce code that is efficient or secure. In some cases, ChatGPT-generated code may be difficult for humans to understand and/or modify, which could lead to issues later.

In education, students can use ChatGPT to create personalised learning content based on their interests and liking, but ChatGPT may not be able to provide accurate or complete information on topics outside its data set. While ChatGPT was able to clear the final exam for The Wharton MBA program, it made errors in mathematical calculations resulting in a grade of B or B-. However, it performed well on the United States Medical Licensing Exam, achieving an accuracy level close to the passing threshold of 60%. It also passed the Law Exams at the University of Minnesota with a low but passing grade equivalent to a C+. These results demonstrate that while ChatGPT can be a helpful tool for learning, it may not always provide perfect accuracy in all subjects.

In healthcare, ChatGPT can assist in medical diagnosis, but the diagnosis still needs to be confirmed by a healthcare professional. Once diagnosed, AI can help healthcare professionals create personalised treatment plans for patients. Ali Parsa, M.D., founder and CEO of Babylon, an AI and digital health platform said “In my view, patient interactions and care should be offered inherently through chat first, virtual care second, and in-person care third. Moving to conversational systems powered through AI models such as GPT-3 (and others), which are contextualised with patient information, will provide more personalised and clinically accurate answers for patients.” While AI and language models like ChatGPT can assist in medical diagnosis and treatment, they are not a substitute for a human doctor's expertise and judgement. AI systems may not be able to handle complex medical cases that require a deep understanding of the patient's medical history and unique circumstances.

In business and finance, Chat GPT can automate recurring tasks and assist with stock trading and financial analysis by creating efficient trading algorithms. It may generate inaccurate or biassed trading strategies due to its limited understanding of market sentiments (which often have nothing to do with real business) and unpredictable events that can affect the market. Recently, according to an article published by business insider, a rogue version of ChatGPT predicted the stock market would crash but it was wrong. The author of the article used a prompt to enable the DAN ‘Do Anything Now’ version of ChatGPT which when asked what the current time was, replied with an answer, which was wrong instead of the usual “I don't have the capability to access real-time information."

Recently, instead of turning to a lawyer, Greg Isenberg turned to ChatGPT to recover his money from a client who refused to pay him. After working with a mainstream brand and providing them with some designs, the communication between them stopped abruptly, leading to a sum of $109,500 owed by the multi-billion dollar client. Isenberg used ChatGPT to draft a scary email which got the company to respond in less than 2 minutes wanting to pay them, saving thousands of dollars of legal fees in the process.

However, with increasing internet penetration, Chat GPT can potentially make technology more inclusive by allowing non-literate customers to speak their queries and receive responses in their native language, potentially changing several industries that serve the poor and women. Nevertheless, for this to happen it must understand the context in which the word is being used, for instance an account in banking is very different than on social media, or an OTT platform.

In conclusion, Chat GPT is changing the way the world perceives technology and the way it interacts with it, but it is not without its risks. We are living in an era where technology increasingly is driving human behaviour and decision-making. Therefore, it is important to recognize the limitations of ChatGPT and other AI technologies and use them appropriately in conjunction with human expertise and judgement.

By Kavya Gupta and Damini Bakhshi

Under the guidance of the R&O Director, Sanaa Chawla