Category: AI

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a cutting-edge language model developed by OpenAI. It is a deep learning-based conversational AI system that has been trained on a massive amount of text data to generate human-like responses to user inputs. The model is based on the Transformer architecture, which was introduced in the paper “Attention is All You Need” and has since become the foundation for many state-of-the-art language models.

ChatGPT uses the Transformer architecture to process input text and generate a response in real-time. The model has been trained on a diverse range of text data, including conversations, news articles, and web pages, which allows it to generate responses on a wide range of topics. When a user inputs a query, ChatGPT processes the input and generates a response by predicting the next word in the sequence. The response is generated by sampling the most likely words, given the input, from the model’s predicted probabilities of each word.

One of the key advantages of ChatGPT is its ability to generate coherent and contextually relevant responses. The model has learned to consider the context of a conversation and generate responses that are consistent with the tone and content of the conversation. This allows ChatGPT to engage in natural and engaging conversations with users.

ChatGPT has been widely adopted by businesses, developers, and researchers in various industries, including customer service, content creation, and research. The model’s ability to generate human-like responses has made it a valuable tool for automating customer service and reducing response times. In content creation, ChatGPT has been used to generate articles, summaries, and other written content, reducing the time and effort required to produce high-quality content. In research, ChatGPT has been used to study language and generate insights into the way people communicate.

In conclusion, ChatGPT is a highly advanced language model that is changing the way people think about conversational AI. Its ability to generate human-like responses in real-time has made it a valuable tool for businesses, developers, and researchers across a wide range of industries. As the model continues to evolve and improve, it will likely have an even greater impact on the way we communicate and interact with technology in the future.

ChatGPT in School

So, there you have it! That’s everything you need to know about ChatGPT in school and how it operates. By the way what did you think about the writing style up there? Was it fun and engaging? Did it make you want to keep reading? Did it have that good, old fashioned, sense of a human touch? Have you even made it this far in the article?

Well, if it isn’t obvious, that whole first part was writing by the titular ChatGPT. This thing has been in the news quite a bit and it seems to be a thorn in the side of educational institutes all around the world. It seems that students simply have to type a subject into this AI and it will just spit out a paper for them. That sounds like the end of humanity to me!

Any AI takes Skill

It’s not quite that cut and dry. Is you know anything about AI then you know that operating it requires some skill. That’s why art created by AI is its own category right now. That section up there didn’t just create itself for me. Here’s the very first result of my foray into ChatGPT:

If you know anything about school, then you know that those two examples are nowhere near the length that would be required of a typical paper. You can also see that it’s all written in a stunted sort of language that would make it stand out in a class of men and women with any semblance of personality. In order to get closer to the length required by any writing assignment, I had to go out of my way and give the AI instructions to create the answer in 500 words.

That may sound like one very simple extra step, but it didn’t quite give me what I wanted. Instead, that text is only 366 words. It seems that ChatGPT in school is just as much of a slacker as the students that try to use it.

What’s the Point?

Okay, so what’s the point we’re trying to make here? It’s the simple fact that the media has just done what it always does. It’s taken a fairly mundane story about something that has little to no bearing on your life and turned it into the next apocalypse. The very educational system that the world relies on to create the next generation of its stewards is falling apart because a child simply has to use a magical computer thingy to do all of his or her work for them.

It actually turns out that using ChatGPT in school to cheat is much harder than you think it is. Every higher learning institute is going to use some form of plagiarism check to make sure its students are doing the work they’re supposed to be doing and not just copy/pasting from Wikipedia. Let’s take that first section, that was writing by the AI and run it through a simple Copyscape check and see what happens:

Yup, that’s right! Fully 7 plagiarism hits in that short 366 word piece! Any teacher or professor is going to be able to get those same results on any paper that’s been written by ChatGPT.

ChatGPT as a Tool

So what does all this come down to? It pretty much means that ChatGPT is little more than a simple tool that people can use on the internet. Can a student use it to write an entire term paper for them, well, yes. But it’s still going to be just as much work for them to edit and rewrite the entire piece to turn it into something that’s actually usable. It’s about as menacing to the world of education as Google. If you have a student that’s capable of using the internet, then you have a student that has the same advantage as one using ChatGPT. It’s nothing to panic over. It’s not just an “easy” button that someone can press to do all their homework so they can spend the rest of the night doing drugs and having unprotected sex. It’s not the end of the world.

That doesn’t mean that the AI program isn’t an exciting piece of technology, though! This is a machine that’s capable of learning from the interactions of the people that use it. There’s no small amount of genius that’s gone into its design and it may, someday, help people with medical problems have human conversations with other people.

The Future of ChatGPT

If you want to get a good look at a future that includes ChatGPT, it’s not hard. AI has been growing increasingly integrated into our world for the better part of a decade. Just because it’s a new technology doesn’t mean that it’s coming to take your job. Just consider a world where the steam engine was never invented because it took away the work of horses. That would be an incredibly stunted society, to say the least.

Instead, the steam engine took over the world, but horses weren’t wiped off the planet. Their roles in everyday life simply shifted and that’s what’s going to happen with AI. Our roles in the workforce will simply be shifted a little bit. We’re not all going to be put out of work because a program can do something for us. If you want a picture of the future of ChatGPT, all you have to do is ask it:

“ChatGPT and other AI technologies can automate certain tasks and make processes more efficient, but they are not designed to replace human workers. Instead, they complement human workers and allow them to focus on higher-level tasks that require human skills, such as creativity, empathy, and critical thinking. However, it is important for workers to continuously develop new skills to remain relevant in an ever-evolving technological landscape. Overall, the impact of AI on the job market will depend on how it’s adopted and used in various industries and how workers adapt to the changes it brings.”

That doesn’t seem all that bad when you think about it. So, the next time the media gets the public into a frenzy about something, just remember: they’re just trying to sell you something that was made in a factory by robots!

Guillermo del Toro says AI is an Insult

Guillermo del Toro recently opened up to Decider about his feeling on AI. It turns out that he sees it as an insult to life itself, or at least that’s what his quote stated. He’s echoing the sentiments of Hayao Miyazaki when he said largely the same thing. While del Toro has been out talking about his newest movie, Pinocchio, it only stands to reason that he would be asked about the concept of AI. He’s the kind of director who still shoots stop motion and practical effects and you have to respect him for that.

He doesn’t like to use computers to make his movies. In fact, here’s what he said about art and AI: “I consume and love art made by humans. I am completely moved by that. And I am not interested in illustrations made by machines and the extrapolation of information. I talked to Dave McKean, a great artist. He told me his greatest hope is that AI cannot draw.” That should tell you everything you need to know about where he’s coming from, and it makes sense. His movies may be dark, but they’re also about human emotion, from the very start to the very end.

Hayao Miyazaki is very much in the same camp. He was featured in a 2016 documentary titled “NHK Special: Hayao Miyazaki — The One Who Never Ends” when he started talking about AI. Here was his take away: “Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.” After being informed that one animator was attempting to create a machine that “draws pictures like humans do,” Miyazaki fired back, “I feel like we are nearing to the end of the times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves.”

It’s not tough to see where they’re coming from and there’s nothing wrong with that sentiment at all. So, what did del Toro actually have to say? Well, here it is: “AI can interpolate information but it can never draw. It can never capture a feeling or a countenance or the softness of a human face. If that conversation was being had about film it would hurt deeply and…as Miyazaki says, it’d be an insult to life itself.”

So, there you have it. According to these two filmmakers, AI has no place in art. You can agree with it, or you can disagree. The only thing that matters is whether or not you support movies that use AI. If you enjoy it, then please buy your tickets. If you don’t, then simply avoid them. It doesn’t have to get any more complicated than that. AI is still going to be used in movies, regardless of the feelings of the people still using real people and that’s just a fact.

Data Mining and AI

Data mining sounds like a dirty term that you should try to avoid at all costs. Most people believe that their personal conversations and browsing habits are being recorded all the time. To a certain extent that’s true, but it may not be as big a problem as you think it is. Data mining is being used all the time to improve AI to try and make your life easier, at least when it comes to the products you by. Being able to turn your lights on and off with an AI assistant is just a fun side effect of that.

What is Data Mining?

So, first off, let’s define data mining. Zyte just released an article that talks all about data mining and how it’s used. According to their definition, “data mining means sorting through extensive data sets to get the valuable information you or your business need. It’s a component of the overall data science and analytics process.” That data is then used by the companies harvesting it or sold to other companies. They then use it to show you ads for products they think you might want, based on that data and that’s the long and short of it.

Data Mining creates AI

Data mining and AI are not the same things. According to John McCarthy, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is defined as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs.” That means that data creates the AIs. This information is being used to build artificial intelligence that can be beneficial to your life. It requires a combination of data analytics, data mining, and machine learning. Once the AI model has been built, new data can be input to generate predictions, without having to repeat the process manually.

It drives Competition

With so much data mining going on and AIs being created by it, then created to get it, it only makes sense that there’s going to be a lot of competition for it. Let’s pretend that a person is newly pregnant. That person is going to be spending a whole lot of money on that baby for the next few years. Any company that makes those products wants to get in there as early as possible to create a brand loyalty to what they make. Any company than can be made aware of the pregnancy through AI and data mining is going to have the upper hand.

It can’t be Stopped

No matter how uneasy it makes you, there’s really no way around it. Data mining is here to stay and so is AI. The best thing to do is to come to terms with it and use it to your advantage. Those companies that want to get into your life are going to be offering you lots of deals to get you on their side. Be smart about it and take advantage of what they’re offering. Then jump ship when the deals dry up and take up different offers.

AI in the Military

Of all the uses you can get out of AI, one of the most commonly used assets it creates is in the military. It’s being used every single day, all over the world, to save the lives of both soldiers and civilians on the battlefront and other places. Most people don’t realize it, but the creation of AI was largely funded by the military. Both DARPA and the D.o.D. funded studies to create what we now know as artificial intelligence. That shouldn’t be a surprise, either. They’re also responsible for research leading to the Hubble telescope, microprocessors, the internet, fiber optics, Kevlar, and a whole slew of products and technology. Whenever the military comes up with an idea they think they can use, they fund its research and develop through private companies. Once the end result is reached, the military is free to purchase it for their own needs and the private companies keep the patents.

This has fueled tech growth for decades, but it’s not all wine and roses. It also happens to be a part of the military industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation about! That’s a totally different article for a totally different platform, though. Now we’re just going to be talking about how the modern military utilizes artificial intelligence!

Threat Assessment

Being in combat isn’t any fun. There are more than enough people who will tell you that. That’s where AI can play a major role in avoiding it through threat assessment. Dataconomy recently released an entire article on it and here’s what they have to say: “With this technology, soldiers may identify dangers more quickly and receive guidance on how to deal with them. Army aircraft and ground vehicles now have intelligent sensors. It is one of the most important examples of how artificial intelligence is used in the military.”

Training

Then there’s the training of soldiers and AI is a massive part of that right now. The military is able to put their soldiers on the front lines and let them experience combat while carrying out their duties and they never have to expose them to any sort of danger. It’s being used extensively in the Air Force. It’s possible to train pilots in VR run by an AI. The end result is a pilot that’s ready to face any situation without jeopardizing his life or a multi-million dollar aircraft.

Cybersecurity

It’s no surprise that lots and lots of people try to break into the military’s network on a daily basis. That’s why AI is being implemented to stop them. The American army recently requested research into cybersecurity technologies powered by artificial intelligence that may protect personnel and communication networks. It is one of the most important examples of how artificial intelligence is used in the military. They can assess a digital threat and shut it down before it causes any damage. That allows them to keep on running while the person trying to hack them gets locked out.

Transportation

The military is nothing if not mobile. Men, women, and material have to be transported all over the world at a moment’s notice. That’s another area where AI is making a huge impact. As stated on Dataconomy: “Soldiers must navigate their vehicles through uncharted territory or terrain with few roads or other modes of mobility. Research is being done to add AI to autonomous vehicles so military personnel can get some help with their travel.” If AI can take that job over, there are fewer risks to the soldiers and the things they’re transporting. It’s a very obvious way of moving around both a battlefield and getting things where they need to go in peacetime.

AI is Everywhere

These are just a few examples of how the military is using AI. Most of the cutting edge operations are hidden being classified reports and operations. The truth is that we don’t know how deep into the military AI has made it. The only thing we do know is that it’s a major part of it and will continue to grow in its importance. That’s also true in the civilian world. AI is everywhere and it’s not going anywhere. When it’s coming installed on everything from your phone to your microwave, you can be sure that it’s never going to disappear. It’s here to make our lives both easier and more difficult We just have to figure out how to get the most of it in our daily lives.

History of AI

AI is everywhere, from your phone to your washer and dryer. It’s steadily becoming a bigger part of our lives as time goes by and there’s no way to stop it. You just have to embrace it and use it as best you can. It doesn’t matter how you feel about your data being mined by certain companies. AI is still going to be in almost everything you purchase for the rest of your life. So, how did it get this way? Let’s take a look back and see how AI became such a large part of the human condition. Here’s a brief history of AI.

AI Started in 1922

That’s right, AI came into existence way back in the year 1922. It seems hard to believe, but it’s true. You just have to realize that it was nowhere near the technology it is today. It all started when a toy by the name of “Rex” was introduced to the marketplace. This was a small wooden dog for children. It had a little doghouse and all the child had to do was call its name. The toy would then activate and come out of whatever sleep mode it was in so the child could play with it.

Audrey

Audrey was the next major leap forward for AI. The name was an anagram for “Automatic Digit Recognition machine.” It occupied a six- foot-high relay rack, consumed substantial power, had streams of cables and exhibited the myriad maintenance problems associated with complex vacuum-tube circuitry. It could recognize the fundamental units of speech, which are called phonemes. All it did was recognize digits spoken aloud. That means it was used for automatically dialing for telephones. Where you now say, “Siri, call….” You would have had to recite the person’s full number to this AI.

Eliza

Then we get to the 1960s and see the advent of Eliza. This was a chatbot developed at MIT by Professor Joseph Weizenbaum. It was created to “demonstrate that the communication between man and machine was superficial.” This AI used pattern matching and substitution methodology into scripted responses to simulate conversation, which gave an illusion of understanding on the part of the program. This was also the time when the “Eliza effect” was coined as a term. It described the tendency of humans to assume that computers are analogous to humans, just like when you call Alexa a “her.”

Harpy

Moving on to the 1970s, we get a project that was funded, in large part, by the U.S. D.O.D. and DARPA. It was a five-year study of a Speech Understanding Research program, aiming to reach a minimum vocabulary of 1,000 words. Companies and academia including IBM, Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford Research Institute took part in the program. The end result was Harpy, which had mastered about 1000 words, equivalent to a three year old. That’s pretty impressive, but nowhere near as sophisticated as the AI learning that you can use today. It’s still fascinating to look back at the baby steps you have to take to get where you’re going!

Simon

Now we’re in the extreme 90s and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are delighting children everywhere and making their parents miserable. It’s also the time when the very first smartphone was created. It came out in 1994 and was named Simon. It really laid the foundation for smart virtual assistants as we understand them in the modern day. Then, 1997 came and Dragon’s Naturally Speaking software could recognize and transcribe natural human speech without pauses between each word into a document at a rate of 100 words per minute. That’s a massive achievement and made AI an actual candidate for something you can use in your home without major levels of frustration.

SmaterChild

SmarterChild was launched in 2001 on platforms like MSN Messenger and AIM. It was a text-based application that was able to play games, look up facts, talk to users, and check the weather for you. If you want to look at something that was as close to the modern digital assistants you get today, this was it. It would only be a matter of time until they started shipping it as default parts of your products.

Siri

That would happen in 2011 when Siri started being shipped as an installed part of every iPhone. It first come out on the iPhone 4S and it’s been a mainstay ever since. Now you can choose from multiple brands of AI and use them to make sure your coffee gets made on time!

The Future of AI

The future of AI is looking very bright and you probably just can’t get past the sense that it’s going to play a major role in your life at some point. The simple fact is that it’s already playing a major role. AI is being used to process your packages, schedule your days, and even decide if you deserve a traffic ticket. There’s no part of our lives that won’t be touched by AI in the future. The best thing to do is simply embrace it and see where it all ends up leading.

There was a recent article published by Forbes that talked about the future of AI in depth. They went into great detail about what we can expect our future lives to be like. It’s a fascinating subject, as long as you’re able to keep the actual conjecture to a minimum. There are plenty of real-world trends that you can look at today to see where AI will be in the future. While we won’t go into the kind of depth they do, we will talk about the major points about where the technology is going to be taking us. The more we know about the future, the better we’ll be able to accept it when it comes.

AI and ML will be change Science

AI and ML at linked to each other in ways that most people don’t even realize. While AI stands for artificial intelligence, ML stands for machine learning. Both of these things require a manufactured program to learn on its own and make its own decisions. That’s where the exciting part really lies. When you can hook an AI up to a product equipped with ML, there’s really no limit to how far they can evolve and figure out problems without human intervention.

Or, as Forbes puts it: “With AI and machine learning (ML), we can expect to see an enormous magnitude of improvement in what can be accomplished. There’s a certain set of ideas that humans can computationally explore. There’s a broader set of ideas that humans with computers can address. And there’s a much bigger set of ideas that humans with computers, plus AI, can successfully tackle. AI enables an unprecedented ability to analyze enormous data sets and computationally discover complex relationships and patterns. AI, augmenting human intelligence, is primed to transform the scientific research process, unleashing a new golden age of scientific discovery in the coming years.”

AI will Change Foreign Policy

Artificial intelligence is going to be everywhere, and that means everywhere. There won’t be a single facet of human civilization that it doesn’t touch. That includes the foreign policy of entire nations. As they put it: “We are likely to see serious government investment in AI. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has publicly embraced the importance of partnering with innovative AI technology companies to maintain and strengthen global U.S. competitiveness.” That’s going to have a major impact on how the world gets along.

The National Security Council on Artificial Intelligence has already released a list of recommendations for the U.S. Government. They clearly state that the United States should greatly accelerate its artificial intelligence innovation, and that won’t just affect how we deal with other countries. That means that entire industries will be created to make these things happen. This has all happened before, with the space race, being one big example. Just think about what the U.S. was before the 50s and 60s and what it was like afterward. They’re two different countries and the race to space fueled a lot of it.

AI will Rule the Next-gen

When we talk about next-gen here, we’re not talking about the next generation of human beings. We’re talking about the next generation of technology. The metaverse is currently being created by human beings, but it’s only a matter of time before that changes drastically. Just look at this this quote: “Next-generation consumer experiences like the metaverse and cryptocurrencies have garnered much buzz. These experiences and others like them will be critically enabled by AI. The metaverse is inherently an AI problem because humans lack the sort of perception needed to overlay digital objects on physical contexts or to understand the range of human actions and their corresponding effects in a metaverse setting.”

So, as it turns out, human beings aren’t actually capable of continuing to create the metaverse because they don’t have the perception necessary for it. Just imagine a piece of factory equipment that’s designed by humans but can no longer be maintained or improved by them. It’s grown so complex that other machines have to be created to do those things. Humans have built a machine that they’re not smart enough to fix. That’s an incredible notion and it’s all happening right now.

Climate Crisis and AI

Finally, we’ll end on the most important note. That’s the fact that AI is going to be instrumental in combating the current climate crisis. The things we’re doing right now just aren’t effective at fixing the problem and we need new solutions if we’re going to survive as a species. As Forbes puts it, there’s “One potential new approach involves prediction markets powered by AI that can tie policy to impact, taking a holistic view of environmental information and interdependence.”

There’s really no telling if that strategy will make a lasting impact, but it’s the best bet we have as a planet. If things keep going the way they are, we’re going to be in trouble. Maybe humanity’s greatest creation can work to save it from itself. Maybe it’s all a waste of time. Either way, AI is the future, no matter how long that future may last. It’s already everywhere and it’s growing in scope every single day. There’s never going to be a better time to embrace it than right now. Learn how to use AI to the best of your ability and you’ll be much better equipped to thrive in a future that will run on it.