The World After the First Year of ChatGPT Generative AI

The generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) ChatGPT had its first birthday on November 30, and although the anniversary barely hit the news, it certainly has left its mark over the course of these 12 months.

Of very diverse and contradictory signs are the traces in the lives of the inhabitants of this planet who have the exclusive of having experienced such a beginning, as did those who learned to use a tape or cassette recorder when it first came on the market, or, even further back in memory, those who first trained in placing the needle of the record player on a vinyl LP.

It's clear that in the future, which seems quite near, the use of this generative AI will be an everyday event and hopefully within everyone's reach and with the necessary regulations; but at this moment it still smells brand new.

The birthday of the ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), developed by OpenAI and as a natural language processing system that uses generative artificial intelligence, offers coherent and creative responses to questions or comments, because it’s designed to understand and generate text autonomously. Although it’s not the same as talking about generative artificial intelligence in general, Chat GPT is a relevant example of this technology.

Considering such possibilities, which are not few, CubaSí asked him three questions on the occasion of his first anniversary:

-How has ChatGPT impacted the world in its first year of existence?

-Since its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT has been a success worldwide. It became the fastest growing software application in the world six months after its launch. It also encouraged the launch of rival chatbots from Microsoft, Alphabet and a group of growing enterprises that took advantage of the hype to raise billions in funding.

“ChatGPT's history dates back to decades of testing and improvement, and its explosive success cannot be explained overnight. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence technology that consists of a chatbot capable of interacting and responding to all kinds of queries from users, through the use of natural language, as if it were an ordinary person.

“In its first year of existence, it has been used by millions of people around the world and has landmarked the beginning of an era in which collaboration between humans and machines becomes increasingly integrated into the work environment.”

-How to evaluate the way humans have embraced ChatGPT?

-Overall, the reception of ChatGPT by humans has been very positive, and has shown that artificial intelligence technology can be a very useful tool for improving efficiency and productivity in a wide variety of fields.

-What future can be seen for this technology in ten years?

-It’s difficult to predict exactly how ChatGPT technology will evolve in the next ten years, but it’s likely to continue to be a very useful tool. In the future, ChatGPT may become even more integrated into people's daily lives and used in a wide variety of fields, from healthcare to education and entertainment.

"It’s also possible that new versions of ChatGPT will be developed that are even more advanced and capable of performing more complex tasks, such as real-time language translation or multimedia content creation. In any case, it’s likely that the artificial intelligence technology will continue to evolve and improve in the coming years, and that ChatGPT will continue to be a very appreciated tool.

It’s impossible to ask a chatbot for modesty. It does not have the capacity to own emotions or feelings like humans; in this sense, its programmers can only design it to be polite and respectful to users, perhaps that’s why these answers seem somewhat petulant.

But the truth is that, in addition to appearing this way - and perhaps being? -, they are somewhat partial since there are many comments from renowned experts who are alarmed. It’s that so that last March about a thousand personalities, including Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), the CEO of Pinterest, and Getty Images, university professors and AI researchers, published a letter calling on all laboratories of AI to immediately suspend, for at least 6 months, the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.

Although, paradoxically, some of the signatories are determined to generate other alternatives that compete with ChatGPT, the claim was based on the “profound risks for society and humanity” that advanced AI could entail.

The letter states that “it could mean a profound change in the history of life on Earth and must be planned and managed with the corresponding care and resources.”

In addition to possible large-scale risks, capable of supposedly endangering the existence of the human species, ChatGPT has also been pointed out to a potential for bias, the generation of inappropriate content, its impact on privacy, as well as a lack of understanding of context in their answers and offering wrong or inaccurate data.

Consequently, there are many who call for an ethical and responsible use of this technology, whose relevance is undeniable in terms of the possibility of human interaction with technology and new forms of access to information.

Sam Altman himself, author of ChatGPT and executive director of OpenAI, even though he points out that it’s "the greatest technology humanity has developed so far", confesses to being "a little scared" about creating Chat GPT and the use that people can give it.”

Interviewed by ABC News he said that "We have to be careful here" and declared himself "particularly concerned that these models could be used for large-scale disinformation."

Regarding ChatGPT's failed responses, he said: "The thing I try to warn people about the most is what we call the 'hallucination problem'," he was referring to the AI, of course. In that sense he added that "the model will confidently affirm things as if they were realities, completely made-up."

To which are added racist and discriminatory approaches in general, depending on the "personalities" assumed, as the businessman acknowledged.

Considering that "these systems are getting better at writing computer code, they could be used for offensive cyber-attacks, he specified.

Despite the undeniable and huge advantages of ChatGPT, it’s very likely that Altman has fallen short when evaluating his creation, which is already a year old. What a baby!

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff