A [Quite] Intelligent Conversation with ChatGPT

With all the hype about ChatGPT I wanted to give it a serious try for some time, but there were just too many other things to do in the first few weeks of the year. Finally, yesterday I found the time to create an account and ended up playing with it for more than an hour. I was really impressed.

This was a much better experience than anything else I had ever tried in the whole conversational AI space. It really felt like an intelligent conversation -- of course with its limits, but definitely a major new milestone in AI research.

What is ChatGPT? Let us simply ask ChatGPT:

"ChatGPT is a pre-trained language model developed by OpenAI. It is a variant of the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) model, which was trained on a large dataset of internet text data. ChatGPT is designed to generate human-like text, and it can be fine-tuned for a variety of natural language processing tasks such as language translation, question answering, and text generation. It is considered one of the most advanced language models in existence, due to its ability to generate coherent and fluent text." [ChatGPT]

The answers generated by ChatGPT really do read very naturally. But there were a few other things that I really liked:

• Most questions I asked were answered correctly with topics reaching from comics and geography to programming and astrophysics
• Even though not all answers were 100% correct, even those that were slightly off were typically still helpful (or at least more helpful than a typical Google search would have been)
• I could ask questions not only in English, but also in German and French with good answers in these languages (which are more difficult to process than English because of their more complex grammar)
• You can even switch languages any time and the system still maintains context (meaning that it can probably also translate between supported languages, though I didn't try it out)
• ChatGPT also tries to avoid speculating or drawing conclusions which means it "knows" its limits which I think is also a reason it seems less biased and provide better answers than comparable systems
• Finally, summarizing worked very well. For instance I asked it to summarize the events in "The Great Gatsby".

"The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story is set in the summer of 1922 in Long Island's North Shore and New York City, and it follows the life of a wealthy young man named Jay Gatsby, who throws extravagant parties in the hope of winning back his former love, Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby's past and the true nature of his wealth are revealed, and his relationships with Daisy, her husband Tom Buchanan, and his friend Nick Carraway all unravel. The novel ends with Gatsby's tragic death and the disillusionment of the characters." [ChatGPT]

Although you could probably even do better, I am quite sure that the majority of human beings are not able to summarize a book's contents as good. But to be fair, the majority of people have not been trained on vast amounts on books and Internet pages :-). Let me provide you with a few other examples of questions I asked.

What is the best Japanese whiskey?

"Japanese whiskey has become increasingly popular in recent years, and there are several brands and expressions that are considered to be of high quality. Some of the best and most highly-regarded Japanese whiskey brands include Suntory, Nikka, and Mars..." [ChatGPT]

What if dark matter does not exist?

"If dark matter were not to exist, it would mean that our current understanding of the universe and its behavior would be fundamentally incomplete. Dark matter is thought to make up about 85% of the matter in the universe, and its existence is inferred from the gravitational effects it has on visible matter, such as the rotation curves of galaxies and gravitational lensing of light by galaxy clusters..." [ChatGPT]

Who is Chad Kroeger?

"Chad Kroeger is a Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter. He is best known as the lead vocalist and guitarist of the rock band Nickelback, which has sold over 50 million records worldwide. Kroeger has also had a successful career as a songwriter and producer, co-writing songs for other artists and working on Nickelback's albums. He is known for his distinctive voice, guitar skills, and songwriting talent." [ChatGPT]

Is Firetask a GTD tool?

"Firetask is a GTD (Getting Things Done) task management tool that is designed to help users organize and prioritize their tasks, projects, and goals. It is available for Mac and iOS devices. Firetask offers a range of features that are designed to support the GTD methodology..." [ChatGPT]

Are superman's and batmans's fathers related?

"Superman's father Jor-El and Batman's father Thomas Wayne are not related in any official stories or comics. They are from completely different universes, Superman is from DC comics and Batman is also from DC comics but they are not related in any way. Superman's story takes place on the planet Krypton, while Batman's story takes place in Gotham City on Earth. While they may not be related by blood, Superman and Batman are often depicted as allies and friends in comics and other media, they are considered to be the two most iconic superheroes in the DC universe." [ChatGPT]

I also liked ChatGPT's answer to "What is the best project management methodology?" -- as it mirrors my own opinion:

"The best project management methodology for a given project will depend on the specific needs and constraints of that project. Different methodologies have different strengths and weaknesses and are better suited to different types of projects." [ChatGPT]

All answers above ending in "..." were always about 3-4 times longer providing more context and background knowledge which I found also quite interesting. Sometimes with small pieces of information I had not known before.

To sum this up a little bit, I would understand if Google is worried about ChatGPT. You cannot yet use it as a replacement for classical Internet search, as its knowledge is cut off in 2021, but the answers you get are often much better than a Google search. And Microsoft has just increased its collaboration with OpenAI, for instance becoming its exclusive cloud provider.

Although being initially skeptical about the capabilities of ChatGPT, I always thought that OpenAI (the research laboratory / company behind ChatGPT) had huge potential, already when it was founded in late 2015. With Elon Musk and Ilya Sutskever as two of the five co-founders and investment from the likes of Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, Kleiner Perkins and Andreessen Horowitz it sounded like a sure bet. These guys know what they are doing (in Elon's case at least most of the time ;-).

Thinking about Elon, the question arises if he maybe has some plans to bring ChatGPT's capabilities to Twitter? This would make sense if you remember his remarks about Twitter becoming an "everything tool".

ChatGPT would most probably also make Siri a lot more "intelligent". The question is whether Apple sees OpenAI as a competitor or a potential partner. An acquisition is unlikely, as its valuation will skyrocket shortly, if it has not already. Just think about what you could create if you combine a portable, easy-to-use AR headset with local machine learning capabilities and ChatGPT's language model?

Anyway, you should give it a try yourself: it is easy to sign-up and to use and it least for now it's chat interface is free to play with. You can also integrate with the technology behind ChatGPT on basis of a pay-per-use model. I just had an idea on how we could accelerate one of our own AI research projects at ONEPOINT Projects by incorporating the ChatGPT engine, as you can even bring domain-specific know-how into the model :-). If this works well, the possible applications are endless.