Chatting Generated Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatting robot (chatbot) service specializing in conversation that OpenAI released on November 30th, 2022. ChatGPT is based on the linguistic technique of Generated Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) 3.5 level, which is a human-like AI model. The production company OpenAI is a non-profit corporation that Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla, and Sam Ultman, the president of Y Combinator established in 2015 for creating digital intelligence. Since 2019, they are additionally expanding investment to accelerate the AI industry.

History and Development of ChatGPT

 GPT is an AI specialized in language, first released in 2018 as GPT-1, developed its level from GPT-2 in 2019 to GPT-3 in 2020. Furthermore, the level of GPT-3.5, called ChatGPT, was released in November 2022, and this upgradation made the best record since it surpassed 100 million users in just two months. ChatGPT has become the center of the conversation because it was released as a form that people can easily understand. Ban Byeong-hyeon, the author of the book titled ChatGPT: The singularity that finally came, said people tend to underestimate the things that they can’t understand easily. Therefore, the fact is that the main technology included in ChatGPT has already been made in 2020, and already had become a big issue among the professionals. In other words, most people just started realizing from the time when the product including ChatGPT was introduced into the market. The parameter number is the most important indicator of the performance of GPT because it acts as a synapse of humans. Synapse is a key part of the human brain that can learn and memorize all the information. In the case of GPT-3, it utilized a 75 billion number of parameters, which is 1,500 times more than GPT-1. GPT-3.5 is an output that additionally applied a reinforcement learning system to GPT-3. Recently, OpenAI also released GPT-4, equipped with 10 trillion parameters on March 14th, 2023. This amount is similar to the number of human synapses.  

The Characteristics and Roles of ChatGPT

 ChatGPT is adjusted utilizing two systems, supervised training, and reinforcement learning, and the OpenAI cooperated with Microsoft to train each model. Supervised training is a basic system of AI that make it study information with a vast store of data. In the case of reinforcement learning is a system that makes AI choose the right action with all the data it has learned. Ban said, one major difference between ChatGPT and other Chat robots, is the scale of servers. The developers need supercomputers to revitalize GPT-3, and the Open AI finally arrived at the stage of level that ChatGPT could be operate smoothly. Furthermore, he added that the other distinction is that OpenAI updated ChatGPT using the reinforcement learning system and human experts to prevent ChatGPT speaking unethical remarks. Especially, it also makes a big difference in memorizing conversations and their context of them. In other words, ChatGPT can understand the hidden context of the conversation and then utilize to next responses through a reinforcement learning system. This technology makes conversations with humans more natural. Furthermore, OpenAI uses a Moderation Application Program Interface (API) system to block comments related to discrimination and hatred. Moderation API is a control system based on AI, that doesn’t answers when there is a question not allowed such as discriminatory, aggressive racist and homophobic things etc. However, Ban stated that there are some critical points. The problem he stated is that people are trying to use ChatGPT as a search engine, even though it is not an AI model for information and knowledge, but for language to talk with humans. 

The Influences of ChatGPT

 As ChatGPT answers to every questions like the search engine, some experts are claiming that it might alternate the worldwide existing search market such as Google. To confront this issue, Google also launched Bard, an AI service specialized in conversation on February 6th, 2023. Furthermore, Microsoft also announced that Bing, its search engine, has equipped a language model based on ChatGPT. However, Ban said about this concern, that it will threaten the existing search market, with the example of Bing, which is a search engine of Microsoft. The AI in Bing can summarize web browsing results. However, it still has low quality compared to the search result from Google. As a result, he explained that existing search engines still have a comparative advantage over new forms, because existing search engines still have more powerful servers. Furthermore, he stated that ChatGPT should be utilize not as a search engine, but as a language model, so they don’t have to compete with each other. Besides, it also became a big issue in the field of education and research. The reason is that ChatGPT can write an essay and research paper that includes a vast amount of expertise compared to other chatting robots existed. On December 27th, 2022, the research team at Northwestern University in the United States also presented the results of their research work that 50 paper abstracts, ChatGPT wrote, have all passed from the program for plagiarism detection. With these researches, OpenAI also introduced its tool that can distinguish the paper whether ChatGPT wrote or not, on their blog, but they also recognized the fact that distinguishing clearly is still hard. Furthermore, OpenAI additionally released ChatGPT Plus which is a paid edition in the U.S., and stated that they will expand this edition globally.

 As ChatGPT is also a big issue for the students, Ban was also recognizing this chaotic situation around universities all around the world. He said, “There is still no correct answer, whether the university uses ChatGPT in a class actively or not.” However, he suggested that it is better to try to make use of it, than unconditionally rejecting the AI. Instead, his point of view is that students should retain their ideas that no AI models can replace.