How to Use the OpenAi Playground: A Comprehensive Guide
Have you heard about OpenAI’s Playground?! This new AI tool has taken the world by storm, as its quickly become the most talked about viral tool on the internet. It’s all over the news, and some experts are even calling it a replacement for Google Search. But what is this new technology and what are the benefits of using it? In this complete guide, find out the answers to just that, and learn how to use the playground to take your productivity (and projects) to the next level!
First Things First: What is OpenAI?
OpenAI is a San Francisco-based research laboratory on a mission to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all humanity. Founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and other technology leaders, OpenAI seeks to advance AI research, development, and policy, by building “a set of technologies that give everyone access to the world’s best AI capabilities.” Moreover, by training AI systems to be helpful, truthful, and safe for humans, OpenAI aims to align future AI systems with human intent.
What Is OpenAIs Playground?
The OpenAI Playground is web-based interface built by OpenAI that makes it easy for users to quickly build and test predictive language models. The platform also provides tutorials and guides to get started with AI development and research, as well as tools for exploring the various techniques used in reinforcement learning.
Of course, to really understand what the OpenAI playground is, it helps to understand how it works and what it can do.
How The OpenAI Playground Works
In the context of machine learning and artificial intelligence, a “model” is a mathematical representation of a system or process that’s used to make predictions or decisions. In the context of OpenAI, a model refers to a “machine learning model” that has been trained on a dataset to perform a specific task, such as recognizing objects in images, translating text from one language to another, or generating text.
There are many different types of models that can be used for machine learning, including linear models, decision trees, neural networks, and more. The choice of model will depend on the specific task that you are trying to perform, as well as the characteristics of the data that you are working with. Some models may be better suited to certain tasks or types of data, while others may be less effective.
In general, the goal of training a model is to find the set of model parameters that will allow the model to make the most accurate predictions or decisions possible, based on the data that it’s been trained on. Once a model has been trained, it can then be used to make predictions or decisions on new data by applying the learned model parameters to it.
How does this relate to the OpenAI Playground?
AI Models that are used for text generation (like those offered in the Open AI Playground) are trained on extremely large datasets, and use algorithms like recurrent neural networks (RNNs) to learn the patterns and structures of language. Once the model is trained, it can then be used to generate text by responding to what you type.
Ordinarily, to use a predictive writing tool like GPT-3 or ChatGPT, you’d have to have train a machine learning model on a dataset of text. Once trained, then you could use it to generate text by providing it with a seed phrase and letting it generate the rest of the text based on the patterns it learned from the training data.
OpenAIs Playground, fortunately, has done all this work for you, for several machine learning models, including all the models in the GPT-3 series, as well as a few others. This allows you to explore a range of reinforcement learning models using a simple, streamlined interface, as well as tweak your model for your use-case, to generate the best results.
Fun fact: The OpenAI GPT 3 model is known as what’s called a “generative model” because it’s been trained to generate data using the data it’s trained on. Generative AI is the sub-field of machine learning that entails generating new data based on a given set of input data.
What You Can Do with OpenAI’s Playground
In simple terms, The OpenAI Playground is simply a predictive writing tool that allows you to generate text — by taking what you type and responding in a human way. This allows you to do a incredibly wide range of things, including the following:
Generate Text
Perhaps the most talked about and astonishing of the OpenAI playground’s many features is the ability to use the a large language model (like GPT-3) — to compute text using nothing but a text prompt. While this might seem simple, the applications are staggeringly complex.
You can enter any type of text, from a phrase, question, or sentence. Once you enter your text prompt, the language model will generate a response — providing answers to questions and generating original content when asked. From there, you can probe deeper — by asking questions about the response provided — or by adjusting the playground settings to create a slightly different text completion.
This feature alone allows you to create everything from write a long-form articles about natural language processing, to a short story about the rise of AI. You can even ask it to write at a 7th-grade reading level. Little wonder why so many people are calling it the best ai writing tool to date.
Are you a writer? Kateryna Abrosymova, a Ukrainian-based content marketer, already has some great tips for creating content with GPT-3 and Chat GPT. You can use the tool to write poetry and ad-copy, create outlines for blogs, and even craft email templates (perfect for networking research).
Explain Concepts
Can’t wrap your head around quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence, or climate change? Wondering what the difference is between the OpenAI Playground vs ChatGPT vs GPT-3?
If you can’t understand a concept, trying asking the model to explain. Simply submit a prompt to “explain X in simple terms,” and the model will explain the topic in a way that’s easy to comprehend. You can use this feature to teach yourself just about anything, at any time, for free. Use it to quench your search for knowledge and help you reach your own conclusions about what things are and how they work.
P.S. It goes without saying that in addition to asking it to explain concepts, you can ask a model to answer any question about any topic — from the existential to the factual — and expect a timely response. (Kind of like what you already do with search.)
Summarize Text
On a related note, GPT-3 (and other language models on the OpenAI platform) can also summarize text as well. Simply paste the text into the text editor and ask it to either summarize the text given. This can be especially helpful for understanding passages of text taken from other third party sources (like Medium articles you can’t make sense of, or parts of a transcript of your prattling professor speaking in class.)
Similarly, you can also ask it for advanced book summaries — goodbye Cliffnotes!
Pro tip: To make concepts even easier to grasp, use the “Summarize this for a second-grade student,” preset, or, when you’re really stuck, ask to “create a metaphor” for the concept you’re trying to understand.
Brainstorm Ideas
With 175 billion parameters, GPT-3 (the most advanced language model on the platform) is one of the largest and most powerful language processing models to date, which makes it great source for generating all kinds of unique ideas. Folks have already used the tool to generate ideas for everything from investment advice and business ideas, to how to make money online.
You can ask your model for suggestions on anything and everything, including how to spend your weekend and what to get your loved ones for Christmas — as well as recipe ideas, pet names, and plot twists.
Translate Text
One easily overlooked feature of some of the more advanced language models on the platform is the ability to quickly and effectively translate text. That’s right — OpenAI’s playground can be your new go-to translator tool. You can translate to and from almost any language, from anywhere in the world, and even ask it to describe something like a pirate.
Learning how to speak a new language? Ask your model to translate a phrase or sentence in the language you’re trying to learn. Then copy and paste the translation into a pronunciation tool, like howtopronouce.com, to easily learn how to pronounce the word or phrase you just translated.
Have A Conversation
Bored, lonely, or intrigued? While not as sophisticated at ChatGPT (more on that below) the playground’s models do have chatbot capabilities and will respond to questions of the personal variety. You can use the tool to pass the time or, even better, test just how creative or clever the AI bot can be.
Complete Code
Finally, the OpenAI Codex is a descendant of the GPT-3 series that’s been trained on both natural language and code. This allows it to create working code in over a dozen programming languages (such as Python, Javascript, and Ruby), as well as perform almost any kind of programming task. Just like Github Copilot, the popular AI pair programmer tool that suggests code and entire functions, the OpenAI Codex allows developers to write code faster and with much less work.
Since it’s private beta release, developers have used the Codex to do math, create memes, solve coding challenges, and generate api calls. It’s also been used to create everything from personal websites to space games using only natural language commands.
How To Start Using OpenAIs Playground
To get started, you’ll need to create an OpenAI account by following this link.
Here’s how to create an account:
- Go to OpenAI’s API page and click Sign Up in the top-right. You can either sign up with a separate email address or with your Google or Microsoft account.
- Enter your name, then verify your phone number.
- When you’re asked “How will you primarily use OpenAI,” choose the option that says “I’m exploring personal use.”
- Next, you’ll be taken to your OpenAI account’s landing page. Click Playground at the top of the screen.
You’ll now have access to the Playground. You can now access all of the tools available on the platform, and start playing with OpenAI’s Playground.
When you start, you’ll just have a blank text box. You can type anything into this box and click the Submit button below it. The AI will respond to your prompt in a few seconds. Anything the AI gives you will be highlighted in green.
Ask the AI questions, tell it to do things, use your imagination. You’ll be surprised by how much it knows and what it comes up with.
Tips for Using the Tool
Be explicit
Because OpenAI’s playground can do so many things, it helps to be really clear in describing what you want. In fact, giving better instructions is the secret to getting better results, which is why it’s important to show, not just tell, the system what you want it to do.
On a related note, it’s usually better to start with statements, not questions. For example, “explain X” will usually give a more detailed response than asking a question about X. From there, you can refine your questions or get more specific answers.
To learn more about prompt engineering and how to make the most of your prompts, check out the prompt design section in the OpenAI documentation.
Use presets
If you’re having trouble coming up with an idea, check out the “Load a preset” drop-down in the top-right corner. OpenAI already has dozens of pre-made prompts built in. Click on one of them and the system will easily insert a prompt that you can use to get started. For more presets, go to https://beta.openai.com/examples.
Save presets
Did you create a hand-crafted prompt, with your own unique settings? Like it enough to save it? You can easily save your settings as presets by clicking the Save button and giving it a name and description. This will let you use your preset settings again for future use, as well as share them with other OpenAI users.
To share a preset, simply click on the Share button and it will create a sharable link that you can copy and paste to share with other users.
Apply settings
The Playground Settings are an important part of the OpenAI Playground. They allow you to customize the way your AI models behave. You can toy with the settings to adjust the response length, prompt engineering, instruction, and more.
Here’s a quick overview of what these settings are all about:
OpenAI Playground’s Settings: A Quick Overview
The Mode setting allow you to determine whether you want the system to respond to your prompts, insert new text into something already written, or edit the text that you’ve pasted in the text box.
The Model options allow you to choose which AI you to talk to. Text-davinci-003 is the default and also the most advanced. The other AI’s aren’t as intelligent, but they also don’t use as many tokens either.
The Maximum Length slider allows you to tweak the response length, allowing to adjust ‘how long’ each of your responses are. (You’ll need to adjust this if you want it to write a 2,000 word essay.)
The Temperature Setting slider allows you to adjust how much “randomness” is in the output. A lower temperature will give you a response that has a higher probability of occurrence. This can be useful if you when there is only one correct answer to your prompt.
If, on the other hand, you want it to give you something more original — such as when generating business ideas — simply raise the temperature to increase the amount of variety.
You can use Stop Sequences to make the model stop at a desired point, such as the end of a sentence or a list. You can use this to ensure the “speaker” (AI or human) doesn’t speak twice in a row, or to generate a list with a specific number of items.
The Top P slider allows you to “fine-tune” the Temperature when the latter is set to 1. Lowering the slider will give you slightly broader answers, whereas increasing it will make your generated text more accurate.
Keep in mind: the Temperature and top P settings control how deterministic (not necessarily creative or clever) the model is in generating a response. So if you’re asking for a response where there’s only one right answer, these settings should be lower. If you’re looking for more diverse responses, they should be higher.
The Frequency and Presence penalties can be used to reduce the likelihood of sampling repetitive sequences of tokens. In other words, to lower the possibility that the system repeats itself.
Finally, the Best of setting can be used to help you find the best (or most probable) answers to a question. It looks through many many possibilities, but it can use up a lot of your tokens, so use it wisely!
Pro tip: If the API isn’t doing what you want, it’s always a good idea to check your settings first. Different settings can generate largely different outputs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between OpenAI’s playground and GPT-3?
While many people (and publications) use the terms interchangeably or conflate the two, referring to it as the “GPT 3 Playground,” GPT-3 is technically just one AI model that’s included in the tool.
OpenAI’s Playground is an interactive programming environment for training and testing AI models. GPT-3 is OpenAI’s most advanced natural language processing model that’s used text generation, question answering, and summarization, among other tasks.
What is GPT-3?
GPT-3 is a predictive language model trained by OpenAI, that generates and summarizes text when prompted. GPT in GPT-3 stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer, and 3 means it’s the third model in the GPT series of AI models.
What makes GPT-3 unique?
As opposed to other language models, GPT 3 Model has been pre-trained on a massive dataset and can be used without any additional training. This allows it to respond to text prompts using less examples and perform a wide range of natural language processing (NLP) tasks, including language translation, text summarization, and question answering.
This makes it one of most powerful language models currently available.
What is text-davinci-003?
Text davinci 003 is one of several GPT-3-specific language models, which can do the same tasks as other models (such as text-curie, text-babbage, and text-ada) but with higher quality, longer output, and better instruction following. That’s why text-davinci-003’s tokens cost almost twice as much as the others.
What is the OpenAI API?
OpenAI API is a set of tools that allows developers to create applications that can interact with the OpenAI platform. It provides access to a suite of powerful AI models, including GPT-3, OpenAI’s natural language processing engine. The API allows developers to quickly and easily create AI-powered applications that are able to generate text, perform natural language processing tasks, and respond to user input.
The OpenAI API is currently available in beta, with a full version planned for release later this year.
Is OpenAI’s Playground free?
Yes, OpenAI’s Playground is free, but with a catch. When you sign up, you’ll be given an initial credit of $18, which can used toward “tokens,” or about 4 characters of text. In the playground, tokens are spent creating prompts and generating responses.
While some models cost more than others, $18 of credit equates to a little more than a million text characters, which means you’ll have more than to take advantage of all the playground’s features. That said, these credits will expire after three months, at which point you can purchase more from OpenAl’s platform.
You can learn more about OpenAI’s admittedly hard to grasp, pay-as-you-go pricing model on their pricing page.
*Images are priced based on one of three tiers of resolution, 1024×1024, 512×512, and 256×256.
How can I track my usage?
As you enter text into the text box in the playground, the counter in the footer will display how many tokens are in your text. This can give you some idea as to how much a prompt “costs.” You can also adjust the Maximum Length setting to dial in the maximum number of tokens in the response.
You can also go to the your usage tracking dashboard by clicking on Personal > Manage account in the top right corner of the page. From here, you can see how many tokens you’ve used during the current and past billing cycles and how many credits you have left to spend.
Other OpenAI Projects
In addition to the OpenAI Playground, OpenAI also offers a wide range of other AI projects, including the recently released Chat GPT-3, DALL·E 2, and OpenAI Gym.
You ca learn more about these projects below.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a variant of the GPT-3 model that’s specifically designed for chatbot applications. It has been trained on an extremely large dataset of conversational text, so it’s able to generate responses that are more human-like, and that are more appropriate for use in chatbots. It’s also able to insert context-specific text into conversations and remember what you said earlier in the conversation, which makes it better at holding one that sounds coherent.
While not as powerful as GPT-3, it’s a better AI model for real-time chatbot applications and can give you a glimpse at what the chatbots of the future could look like.
Interested in learning more? Colin Baird has put together a great beginner’s guide to ChatGPT for anyone interested in how and when to use it.
Isn’t ChatGPT part of the OpenAI Playground?
Technically, no. ChatGPT is an open-source natural language processing (NLP) model developed by OpenAI, that’s a variant of the GPT-3 model. But it’s not included in the OpenAI Playground platform.
That said, since ChatGPT is on a subdomain, you’ll need to sign in separately to use it. Fortunately, you can sign in with the same account you used to access the OpenAI playground.
What is DALL·E 2?
Another variant of GPT-3 is DALL·E 2, an AI-driven image generator, that’s been trained to generate images from text descriptions. You can use the AI tool to create AI-generated images using nothing but text prompts, as well as retouch, edit, and modify images with words.
DALL·E 2 also has two especially advanced graphics-editor features which OpenAI calls “in-painting” and “out-painting,” respectively. In-painting allows you to replace an object in the foreground with a different object, while keeping the background the same. Out-painting, on the other hand, allows you to expand the original borders of an image, while staying true to its original visual elements.
Pictures of cats can now reach a whole new level.
What is OpenAI Gym?
OpenAI Gym is a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning algorithms. It provides a variety of environments to train agents, including classic video games (like Atari), continuous control tasks, and physical simulations. It also includes a wide range of tools for visualizing and debugging reinforcement learning algorithms, great for data science projects.
Where to Learn More The OpenAI Playground
If you’re looking for more resources to help you get started, there are plenty of tutorials and videos available online. Science Focus has a great article about how GPT-3 works and you can obviously search for “openai playground” on Google (or ask GPT-3 yourself) to find more information.
To learn more about the future of artificial intelligence and where it’s headed, check out the podcast interview: AI for the Next Era with Reid Hoffman, founder of Linkedin, and Sam Altman, cofounder of OpenAI.
Conclusion
The OpenAI Playground is a amazing tool for anyone who wants to explore what the latest advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning and language models have to offer. Whether you’re a developer who wants to work with AI models, or a non-developer who wants to brainstorm ideas, learn new concepts, or write a novel, OpenAIs Playground is for you!
Create your OpenAI account today to discover the extraordinary potential of OpenAI, and to unlock your creativity and productivity!
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