Is ChatGPT the next big thing in tech?

The global tech industry ended last year in a rather gloomy picture. Stock prices plummeted, mass layoffs and crypto catastrophes dominated headlines and riled the sector. Despite that, ChatGPT became a viral hit last November.

Generative Pre-Training Transformer, or ChatGPT, is a powerful language model created by OpenAI (openai.com) that generates human-like text in response to a question.

Think about it like Google Search on steroids or a more intelligent version of digital assistants — like Siri or Alexa — that better understand what you are looking for and give it to you.

The app understands and responds to natural language input like you are talking to another human. ChatGPT is great at content creation. In minutes, a pastor can request ChatGPT to prepare a sermon; teachers can ask it to prepare notes for their classes or generate a complete essay for university students. For parents, it could teach their children math, science and English or whatever subject their child is taking.

Creating articles

The model can generate highly readable and engaging text, making it an ideal tool for creating articles, blog posts, and even books. These features can significantly benefit content creators, saving them significant time and effort.

ChatGPT can also generate automated responses to customer inquiries, allowing companies to respond to customer inquiries in real-time.

Furthermore, the model can understand and generate text in multiple languages, making it an ideal tool for translating documents and websites. It can also translate subtitles for videos and audio files, making it a perfect tool for the entertainment industry.

ChatGPT, like all language models, gets better through fine-tuning. Fine-tuning involves training the model on a dataset specific to the task or domain it will be used for. For example, if the model is going to be used for customer service, it would be fine-tuned on a dataset of customer service conversations.

Good training data

The tool seems knowledgeable in areas with good training data from which to learn. While it isn't smart enough to replace humans entirely, it can be creative, and its answers are downright authoritative.

Seeing a bright future for the application, Microsoft plans to invest $10 billion. ChatGPT could help Microsoft increase its market share in web search, a market dominated by Google.

Microsoft’s Bing browser has a small market share in the global search engine market. ChatGPT may help the firm chip away at Google's dominance by offering more advanced search capabilities.

Despite its advantages, ChatGPT has some limitations, just like any other AI model. The model can generate highly readable text but cannot comprehend the context. Therefore, the model may generate inappropriate or offensive content, which may concern companies that use it for customer service or content creation.

ChatGPT is free, but OpenAI sells access to its underlying language and related AI models.

Mr Wambugu is a Certified Cloud and Cyber Security Consultant. [email protected]; @Samwambugu2