ChatGPT — The Next Tech Revolution?
It’s no secret AI has been around for a long time. Industry have been using it to enhance their products and applications, as well as your user experience for a number of years.
Take Tesla’s use of AI technology to develop their self driving car technology and robotics as a real world example. Or less spectacular but things you may use daily to make your life easier, without even knowing AI is behind the wheel; Those chat screens you use on a website to talk to a customer service agent… Sorry to break to you but if you didn’t already know… sometimes you aren’t talking to a real person!
While industry has been using AI for quite some time, it has never really broken into the end user consumer market where the average Joe could use the power of AI for their own specific needs.
Enter Open AI’s ChatGTP. ChatGPT as descibed by Open AI, is a Natural Language Model that has been trained to interact with the end user. You can literally ask it anything and it will attempt to answer it for you in plain “english” (or whatever language you prefer). If you’re not happy with the response you can ask it to explain further, or even tell it is wrong and it will check it’s answers and learn from you as well.
Here’s some examples I tried:
Then I asked it to explain again
Then I told it, it got it wrong (it didn’t but hey let’s test this thing out!)
The use cases for this technology seem endless. From school kids seeking information for assignments, through to philosophical minds pondering the meaning of life, through to tech developers such as programmers who need guidance on coding or the bot doing coding itself via their Codex Model.
The question on the table right now is, will this tech just be another piece of the very large tech puzzle? Or will it be a stake in the ground for a major technological revolution?
Early indications are, the latter may well be on the cards! Microsoft have extended their partnership with Open AI, plunging billions into the next phase of research and development. In response, Google have announced its plans to bring forward it’s AI programme, with a trial version of its search engine with an AI chatbot and plans to showcase 20 new AI products in 2023.
With two big tech heavy hitters upping the ante, we may be in for a technological revolution not seen since the development of the PC, DOS and Windows OS. Or, the release of the consumer version of the internet and the revolution of the Search engine into what we know now.
I can already see the language changing from “Google it” to “ChatGPT it”!
What excites me around this isn’t the current (released) capability of this AI tech, which is essentially to gather existing information from the far reaches of the internet and formulate it into the response you’re seeking. I look forward to the day this tech starts seriously discovering the undiscovered! The mind boggles at what advancements in science, technology and civilisation could be achieved with AI searching for the universal answers we so desperately seek.
Over the coming weeks, i’ll be exploring potential real world use cases of this AI technology in data and analytics and start a narrative on how & why commercial industry and government need to start leveraging off this tech in the data space. Stay tuned.
