• SL cyber security specialist addresses famous AI chatbot

ChatGPT is the latest hyped up entity in the tech world, being widely spoken about on social media and the news, with memes revolving around it. Tech companies are even launching rivals to ChatGPT. What is this ChatGPT and why has it taken over global headlines? 

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by San Francisco-based startup OpenAI. OpenAI was co-founded in 2015 by Elon Musk and Sam Altman and is backed by well-known investors, most notably Microsoft. 

It is one of several examples of generative AI. These are tools that allow users to enter written prompts and receive new human-like text or images and videos generated by the AI.

ChatGPT is an advanced AI chatbot trained by OpenAI that interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.

GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, a complex neural network based on the revolutionary ‘attention’ concept. ChatGPT is fine-tuned from a model in the GPT-3.5 series, which finished training in early 2022. ChatGPT and GPT-3.5 were trained on an Azure AI supercomputing infrastructure.

The conversation around ChatGPT 

According to CNBC, the tool is the talk of the business world. It has been mentioned on earnings calls by management from a range of companies including oil giants, banks, and even the industrial behemoth Caterpillar.

It has also sparked concerns over potential abuses. In classrooms, students have used ChatGPT to generate entire essays, while hackers have begun testing it to write malicious code.

What makes ChatGPT so impressive is its ability to produce human-like responses, thanks in no small part to the vast amounts of data it is trained on.

“What’s exciting is that the responses are more and more human-like, so what you’re seeing is things that we did not think computers could do before,” professional services firm EY Global Chief Innovation Officer Jeffrey Wong told CNBC.

Another feature that differentiates ChatGPT is its ability to log context from users’ earlier messages in a thread and use it to form responses later in the conversation.

The chatbot signed up one million in the five days after its release, according to a 5 December tweet from Altman. By January, ChatGPT had amassed 100 million monthly active users only two months into its launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to a UBS note published recently.

It took TikTok nine months to reach 100 million users and Instagram two-and-a-half years.

ChatGPT had its biggest-ever day on 31 January, with its website garnering a record 28 million daily visits, according to data from Similarweb. That was up 165% from a month ago.

Relevance to Sri Lanka

Cyber security expert Asela Waidyalankara told The Sunday Morning Business that Sri Lanka needed more exposure to such features. 

“What we really have to look into is how our identification system will be challenged. We cannot tell students to do an assignment anymore; ChatGPT has passed MBBS exams, law exams, and several MBA exams as of now. Judges are using it in Brazil to provide judgements,” he explained. 

He stated that there were other similar products that performed the same tasks, in addition to ChatGPT. Waidyalankara noted that Google was also planning its own version of GPT and added that we were in the consumer AI phase at present. 

“This means that there are AI products targeting consumers. All this time, even when we had it, we did not realise we are using AI. For example, when we use Google and Facebook, AI is in the background. Now it is out there as a consumer product,” Waidyalankara noted. 

According to him, Sri Lanka can benefit from this by integrating it into the education system and making people think creatively about it. He noted that it would be pointless to ask students to study if ChatGPT was going to do their assignments. 

“We need to find a way to get the kids to think differently. In addition to this, sectors like tourism can benefit from ChatGPT if it gives answers based on what it is trained in. For example, you can work with ChatGPT to get better results about Sri Lanka Tourism and Sri Lanka Tourism, in turn, can use this for promotions,” he elaborated.