Since the last time I did an update on this blog, the world has changed once again. It seems like something new and revolutionary is happening at such huge rates over the last year or so, it is beginning to get difficult to keep up with everything that has been going on in the world of technology. Of course, you have to have been living under a rock to not have heard of the latest craze in artificial intelligence (AI) - and currently, that is ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is, indeed, something else. I have had plenty of opportunities to play with it in my spare time lately, mostly just asking it random questions about whatever might have popped into my head. This includes everything from questioning it about programming, Linux, politics, and various philosophical topics. I must say, I was highly impressed by its responses - though it is important to note that some of the information it will give you is going to be outdated by a year or two depending on what you ask it. This is because the model is trained on data only up to 2021, and it does not have access to the internet.
ChatGPT is not terribly impressive in its code samples that it gave me - I noticed a few bugs that I would have had to fix if I were asking it anything serious, and I would highly recommend that if you are using it as a sort of "pair-programmer" that you make sure to double-check on any code samples you obtain from ChatGPT before you consider putting the code into production. It is certainly impressive in some of the code breakdowns it was able to give, and some of them were actually spot-on. These were, of course, smaller things I could think to ask it off the top of my head. I have not tried to build a "real" project with it yet, nor do I know if I plan to. While it is impressive in its current form, what ChatGPT really represents (in my opinion, of course), is what is to come in the future.
Think about it - this is the first true conversational AI of its kind. It gets a lot of things wrong, it is not up-to-date on some of the latest topics due to when it was trained and its current limitations, but this is a sneak-preview of what is to come in the world of artificial intelligence. In 2022 alone, we saw the rise of AI applications that could generate images from a text prompt and a conversational one that can answer almost any question posed to it. This is huge progress in the world of AI, a world which was previously mostly imagination, tons of research and development, and over-promising and under-delivering. With the progress we have seen in the last year alone in the world of AI, however, I can now envision a world where, before long, we will see things like:
Sure, this might sound pretty far-fetched, but is it? We are seeing unprecedented growth in the world of artificial intelligence right now. Neither of the scenarios I mentioned above are right around the corner or anything like that, but in the coming years, I would not be surprised at all to actually begin to see something like those happen. I am also expecting to see deep-fakes become more and more realistic and common as time continues to go on, and I will say, I have seen a few online in the past few months that might be quite convincing to the untrained eye.
This was only meant to be a small update of something that has been on my mind since ChatGPT took the world by storm a couple of months ago. It did something that not many online applications are able to do - it crossed 1 million users in a matter of five days. Think about that. It took platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, and the like months or even years to reach a million users. This is the power of intrigue surrounding ChatGPT and the cultural phenomenon it has become. In the coming months, I fully expect to see applications beginning to be built on top of it to provide more utility to users - I know someone is actually currently working on implementing ChatGPT directly into the GNOME shell on GNU/Linux distributions by way of a GNOME extension - who knows where else it will continue to go from here. I am going to continue to watch with interest and test out whatever I find interesting, and maybe, just maybe, I will think of some implementation where it makes sense in one of my own projects if I get to feeling like it...
...Just saying, Shellbie might be a good candidate for such a thing. I'll think about it. Someone has already mentioned it to me in a chat on the fediverse. Either way, we are all in for an interesting ride as we all continue to watch together the rise of some of these more powerful, more conversational AI models. They will only continue to get better and better over time. Do you think there will be a time (in our lifetimes) when we see a conversational AI that is indistinguishable from conversing with a human? I don't know, but I have a strong suspicion that we most likely will with the way progress has begun to unfold in this area in the 2020s.
Personally, I'm pretty hyped for it.
If you have heard of ChatGPT but not messed about with it just yet, head to this link to create your OpenAI account and begin playing around. If you want to try something similar without making an account, look into YouBot, a very similar project by the "AI Search Engine", You. I have been using it a bit more than ChatGPT lately due to it having access to the internet, and it is very good for what it is. It is also important to note that both projects are still in beta, so you should be aware that they will make errors and mistakes as they are constantly improving over time.
How do you feel about ChatGPT, or AI in general? Get involved in the conversation by connecting with me on the fediverse.
This week I am reading Phone Losers of America by Brad Carter, one of my favorite internet pranksters of all time.