Artificial intelligence designed to understand, generate human-like text
BALTIMORE - ChatGPT is designed to understand and generate human-like text.
It's been trained on a massive amount of data, including books and websites.
You can ask questions, seek advice, or just have a casual conversation.
ChatGPT helped write this paragraph!
The artificial intelligence tool is exploding in popularity because anyone can use it, and it can answer almost any questions.
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For example, you could use it to write press releases, legal briefs, or homework assignments.
"You will say 'write an essay on the causes of the American Revolution as a freshman in college.' And it will do that," said Dr. Anupam Joshi, Director of the Cybersecurity Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Dr. Joshi said you can see how ChatGPT could threaten jobs, including mine.
When he asked it to write a news article about crime in Baltimore, it gave statistics, descriptions of people's feelings, and even a quote from the mayor.
"It's doing a pretty good job of being a reporter, or maybe being a professor," Dr. Joshi said. "Maybe the next thing I should do is say 'prepare a lecture on…'"
ChatGPT knows a lot, but does not know everything.
It has limited knowledge of the world and events after 2021.
That means it may generate incorrect answers. It may also produce biased content and spread misinformation.
"This can be used to take real things that have happened, mix it with opinions, and just a little bit of tailored misinformation, to craft a narrative and get people to think a certain way," Dr. Joshi said.
Tech companies are rushing to incorporate these chat models into their search engines.
So instead of getting a list of links, you'd engage in dialogue with the AI.
Dr. Joshi said that's just a few months away.
"It's a good tool," Joshi said. "It will do some things very well. But like any tool, you have to be careful how to use it."
The company Open AI released ChatGPT in November.
And right now they're doing a research preview to get user feedback, so you can use the chatbot for free.
And just so you know, GPT stands for "generative pre-trained transformer."