By Adam Bloodworth
Instead of explaining ChatGPT in my own words, I’ll let ChatGPT explain itself.
Logging onto the website, I search: “What is ChatGPT?”
“GPT can be used for a variety of tasks, including language translation, summarization, and chatbot responses,” the chatbot responds. “In the context of chatbot responses, GPT could be used to generate responses to user inputs in a chat or messaging application.”
Clearly not used to tooting its own horn yet, I’ll say it like it is: ChatGPT is changing the world. How? By changing the way we use the internet. Type in any search term and Chat GPT will compose an answer using Artificial Intelligence. It’s ironic that its definition of itself is so dry -spend a couple of hours plugging in different fascinating questions to ChatGPT and they’ll generally be answered in sentences which are easy-to-read and understand.
Created by AI developer OpenAI, ChatGPT is uniquely significant because it doesn’t rely on SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, to bring up answers for those of us who turn to the internet for truth. SEO can be unreliable, as it relies on newspaper editors and those creating content to input keywords that are going to be noticed by Google and rank the page highly. It is a system that can be exploited by savvy editors who know how to ‘keyword’ an article – and crucially, the most ‘keyworded’ article that ranks the highest doesn’t necessarily offer the highest quality information. In fact, often SEO-found articles can offer low quality user experiences.
When we Google “What time is the football on tonight?” we often have to scroll down through an online article that has buried the actual start time five or six paragraphs into a piece so users spend more time scrolling on a page. Websites want users to spend more time on a page as Google rewards websites that have long visitor dwell times, so burying the useful information is a cynical move by newspapers and doesn’t serve the reader.
Collating information from thousands of sources using AI, ChatGPT serves the user directly by providing them the information they want. It is way more objective than a traditional search engine, pulling data from thousands of different sources. 570GB of data was pulled from books, Wikipedia, and from around the internet and fed into the Chat GPT algorithm.
ChatGPT logged one million users in its first five days earlier this month. That’s faster growth than Netflix, Instagram and Twitter when they first launched. As we all fear misinformation online and want trusted sources that cost us minimal effort, surely ChatGPT is the future of search and our online lives. Of course, it can’t provide absolute truths. It’s good practice to fact check everything searched for on the internet, no matter whether you use ChatGPT or Google or another source, but it is way closer to the high quality online experience we all crave.
There’s the potential that it could get corrupted – another service the tool provides is condensing information into bullet points using AI, even Instagram captions. In time, ethical questions around the service may rise. Will it cost the jobs of writers and social media workers because it is so effective at writing captions and bios? Will content writers become reliant on it and use it for their work rather than writing themselves?
AI is already proving to be wildly popular across the private sector at this early stage. Tech firm Soffos recently commissioned an independent survey amongst 358 decision-makers from UK businesses. 32 per cent of businesses are already using AI in some way, with a further 12 per cent looking to implement in the next 12 months, and another 14 per cent beyond this period.
Probably. But in the meantime, I’m off to ask for answers to the meaning of life and to try and outwit the service that is frankly making me look silly. Surely there’s something ChatGPT doesn’t have the answer to….
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