My first conversation with ChatGPT
From my archive, written 20 December 2022. These are my impressions at the time.
I’ve only recently heard of OpenAI’s new product from TikTok: ChatGPT, they were the people behind DALL-E. I wouldn’t have found out about this if not for TikTok, as much as I hate them, they always give me things that are recent. Anyway, I heard about this software, OpenAI is sort of hard to explain in one sentence, I’ll put it the best I can; basically, through machine learning, it does anything you ask it to, in text form. You can ask it to solve equations, how to make trading bots, help on coding, write a professional letter, ask it to find five songs with female vocals and no drums and are ambient, I used it to explain to me when “de” is used in Spanish (What examples), it gave me six simple bullet points and now, despite me previously googling it, I understand in what circumstances it can be used, basically, you ask it things, it creates/answers them.
Someone created and sold a children’s book; they used ChatGPT to generate the text, visual images from something else called Midjourney, he put it together and sold it on amazon for $8.99, he did it over one weekend, how long would it have taken someone to get together those images? To have ideas for the story? I asked it to make an introduction for a scene of a book I’d been thinking of and had wanted to make for a while. Holy shit, wow! As the text was generating, I was so goddamn surprised that it could do this from one sentence. I’m going to change it and use it for a template for my story, I’ll work around it, but holy shit, this is impressive. I also asked it to write a poem about corn with an underlying theme of hell, here is what it generated: “Corn, oh corn, Golden and sweet, From the fields it grows, A treat for the eat, But beware of its husk, For it hides a dark seed, A kernel of evil, Planted by greed, The corn of hell, A twisted and cursed crop, It feeds on the wicked, And, never will stop, It sprouts from the ashes, Of those who have sinned, A harvest of horrors, Their fate now is pinned, So beware of the corn, And the fields it may grow, A taste of its kernels, May lead you below, To the fiery pits, Of eternal despair, Where the corn of hell, Forever will ensnare.” Along with some things needing a plagiarism checker (Just in case) you’ll also need to be aware of AI detectors, they can identify if text comes from an AI and they’re luckily free to use online.
I used on called GPT-2 Output detector demo, on the corn poem, it detected that the poem had a 99.98% of being created by a human, for the first example of the story that I asked it to write, it detected that it had a 52.91% chance of being written by an AI and a 47%.09 chance of being written from a human, once I tweaked it, by removing the obvious sounding AI sections, it changed to an 8.21% chance of being written by an AI, although nothing you write can go straight out (if you’re using it in a context where it will be checked) it doesn’t take much to “correct” it.
If something as complex as this can exist, I have no doubt that unless regulations come into place, we will definitely reach a point where AI detectors simply don’t work and text, regardless of human or AI, cannot be differentiated and have way more intelligence than they already have in solving complex tasks. It’s somewhat a competitor to google, if you have an issue, it creates simplified solutions in bulletpoint form, like what I asked it about de in spanish. My main issues with finding information on google is the sometimes irrelevant information, slow websites, constant fucking pop-up ads, paywalls, this is free (at least so far), simple to use, simple to understand and there is no bullshit in the way, you ask it a question (even a quite complex question) and it answers that question alone, so google definitely have something to compete with, I think.
ChatGPT reached 1 million users in 6 days, the same amount took Netflix 41 months, who knows what OpenAI will come up with next. This is too much of a good thing, though, it's too powerful, as big of a breakthrough as this is, it will be the death of many professions if it becomes increasingly intelligent and relied upon. Freelancers, authors, coding, legal advice, or maybe it will simply be tools for them to use, if they need advice on a subject that they’re already familiar with and takes time to understand.
Regardless, its a dangerous but fascinating thing to see in my lifetime, not the last I’m sure.