Everyone is talking about it. But if you’ve been living in a remote part of the world, you might be asking what is ChatGPT? If you’re just nodding your head along and pretending you know what they’re talking about, here’s your cheat sheet.
ChatGPT was created by OpenAI and launched as a prototype on November 30, 2022. It quickly gained massive attention for its articulate answers and detailed responses. Within a week, it had 1 million users. By December 29, 2022, that number had doubled to more than 2 million.
When we talk about ChatGPT, “Chat” refers to a chatbot, and “GPT” stands for Generative Pretrained Transformer.
Chatbot is a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially online.
Generative Pretrained Transformer refers to a family of language models trained on a large collection of text data to generate human-like language.
That’s a mouthful, so let’s break it down. ChatGPT is a chatbot powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence.
You can try ChatGPT for free at chatgpt.com
How Does It Work?
If you’ve tried it, you know ChatGPT can answer questions, summarize articles, generate lists, create original content like poetry and essays, and a whole lot more.
But how does it actually work? The simple answer is on-the-job training.
ChatGPT is trained using a combination of supervised learning and reinforcement learning. Both approaches rely on human trainers. Some are OpenAI staff. Some are users like you. Your feedback is collected and used to help the model get smarter over time.
Users can vote responses up or down and leave comments. That feedback loop directly helps improve ChatGPT’s output.
A woman in a yellow sweater sits at a coffee shop and uses ChatGPT on her laptop.
Is It As Great As Everyone Says?
My first encounter with ChatGPT was in a local social media group where parents and teachers were discussing what this new tech might mean for book reports and research papers at the local high school. One parent worried that students might never have to write a paper again.
Let’s not get carried away. I don’t know about you, but I can usually spot AI-generated content. It often lacks personality and includes small but obvious errors. A common one is repeating the same point in different words across back-to-back sentences.
ChatGPT is powerful, but it’s not perfect. Some current limitations:
The quality of responses can vary wildly. One prompt might deliver something brilliant. The next might leave you scratching your head.
It is trained on data that only goes up to 2021. That may change in the future, but it’s a current limitation.
According to OpenAI, ChatGPT “sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.”
What Does This Mean for You?
If you’ve been in your industry for a while, you’ve already lived through more than one tech revolution. This is another. But that doesn’t mean it’s the end of anything. It means we adapt.
Still, there are professions where the impact may be felt sooner and deeper. Writers, educators, developers, and customer service professionals are watching closely. I am too. As the owner of a creative agency, I’d be lying if I said this doesn’t have my full attention.
Here’s how I think about it. When the modern calculator was created in 1967, it didn’t make accountants irrelevant. It became a tool that helped them work faster and more accurately.
That’s how I see ChatGPT. Not the end. Just a new tool. How we use it will make all the difference.
