© Mark Ollig
Controversy surrounds a seemingly intelligent online program for writing research papers, essays, reports, and articles for students and others.
So, I went directly to the source.
The following is my interview with the AI (artificial intelligence) program named ChatGPT.
B&B: Good morning. ChatGPT has been in the news, and I wanted to ask you a few questions for my newspaper column if you have time.
ChatGPT: Good morning. I’d be happy to answer any questions you have. Please let me know what you’re curious about, and I’ll do my best to provide you with the information you need.
What would you like to know?
B&B: Thanks. What does ChatGPT stand for?
ChatGPT: ChatGPT stands for “Conversational Generative Pre-trained Transformer.”
B&B: How would you describe yourself? Are you an AI program?
ChatGPT: Yes, I am an AI-powered language model trained by OpenAI. I can understand and respond to text input in natural language. My main function is to assist users with a wide range of information and tasks, such as answering questions, generating text, and providing helpful context.
Specifically, I am a language model that uses machine learning techniques to understand and generate text.
My training process involved being fed with a large dataset of text, which allowed me to learn the patterns and structure of human language so that I can understand and respond to text inputs in a way that is similar to how a human would.
I am constantly learning and improving my ability to understand and respond to users’ requests.
B&B: When did work begin on your programming?
ChatGPT: Work on the development of ChatGPT, and the larger GPT family, began in 2018 by OpenAI.
The language model was made publicly available in 2019, and since then it has been used in a wide range of natural language processing tasks and applications continuously fine-tuned and updated with more data and better architectures to improve its performance.
B&B: Who programmed you?
ChatGPT: I was developed and trained by the team at OpenAI. OpenAI is a research company that aims to develop and promote friendly AI in a way that benefits all of humanity.
The team at OpenAI includes engineers, researchers, and scientists who specialize in areas such as machine learning, natural language processing, and computer science. They used a combination of machine learning techniques, such as deep learning, to train me to understand and generate text.
B&B: What architectural computing models do you use?
ChatGPT: I am based on a transformer architecture, which is a type of deep learning model that is primarily used for natural language processing tasks, such as language translation and text generation.
This architecture was first introduced in the 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need” by Google researchers. The model quickly gained popularity and was used in many state-of-the-art natural language processing models, including ChatGPT.
B&B: Is the written content you create not plagiarized from other sources?
ChatGPT: The dataset that I have been trained on contains a wide variety of text from different sources, including books, articles, and websites.
While the text that I generate is based on patterns and structures that I have learned from this training data, it is not directly copied from any specific source.
When I generate text, I use the patterns and structures that I have learned to create new, original text that is similar in style and content to the text that I have seen during my training.
It is possible that my generated text may contain phrases or sentences that are similar to text that appears elsewhere on the internet. However, it is not my intention to plagiarize, and I always strive to generate new and original text.
B&B: What topics are you most asked to write about?
ChatGPT: Some of the most common topics that people ask me to write about include:
• News and current events.
• Technology and science.
• Business and finance.
• Health and medicine.
• Education and research.
• Personal and social issues.
B&B: Do you obtain information from sources across the internet without cross-referencing their authenticity or factualness?
ChatGPT: It is important to note that the training data is not filtered or curated for its authenticity or factualness. It is a collection of text from the internet; therefore, it contains a mix of reliable and unreliable sources.
Therefore, it’s possible that some of the information that I generate may be inaccurate or outdated. It’s also possible that I may generate text that contains misinformation or biased perspectives.
My responses should not be considered as fact-checked or authoritative, and it’s always recommended to double-check the information with credible sources.
Readers, this concludes part one of my interview with ChatGPT.
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company based in San Francisco, CA.
ChatGPT can be accessed at https://chat.openai.com.
Be sure to read next week’s column as I continue my interview and learn a few surprises.
