ChatGPT: A General Overview – The Technology, Potential and Limitations
Recent advancements in natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence paved the way to revolutionary technologies like ChatGPT. Launched by OpenAI in November 2022, ChatGPT reached unprecedented levels of popularity as a technology tool, being used by more than 1 million people within a week. So, what exactly is ChatGPT, how is it produced, and what potential does it offer for the businesses? We will try to answer these questions from a general perspective.
What is ChatGPT?
When we ask this question to ChatGPT, it responds, “ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI, based on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) series. This model has natural language understanding (NLU) and natural language generation (NLG) capabilities and has been trained to understand and produce human-like speech. ChatGPT learns language, cultural, and general knowledge from a wide and diverse range of texts.” Natural language processing is a field of computer science that aims to develop computer systems capable of understanding and processing human language. ChatGPT is considered the latest breakthrough in natural language processing technology. This superior language model, developed by OpenAI, processes human language with astonishing success by leveraging the power of artificial intelligence to understand, create, and analyse texts.
Since its public release in November 2022, everyone has been experiencing ChatGPT for various reasons. Now, people are getting used to communicating with AI, chatting, having it do homework, generating texts, and answering questions, sometimes even forgetting they’re interacting with a software. The main features of ChatGPT, which some just give a try and some have already started to use it as a daily tool for their work, can be grouped into three main categories:
Powerful Natural Language Processing Capability
ChatGPT, anlam ve bağlam açısından zengin metinler oluşturmak ve anlamak için gelişmiş NLP tekniklerini kullanıyor. Bu sayede, ChatGPT kullanıcıların girdiği metinlere doğru ve anlamlı yanıtlar veriyor.
Extensive Training Data
OpenAI states that they have fed ChatGPT with a large amount of training data. This dataset includes texts collected from books, articles, blogs, and other sources available on the internet. As a result, ChatGPT has knowledge on a wide range of subjects and utilises this information when answering users’ questions.
Sustainable Development
OpenAI is continuously updating and improving the models behind ChatGPT. There have been five different models released in the GPT series, including GPT, GPT-2, GPT-3, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4. This allows the language model to provide more effective and accurate responses, serving a broader range of use cases over time.
What technology is behind it?
The first model of the GPT series, GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), containing 117 million parameters, was released by OpenAI in 2018. Shortly after, GPT-2 was released in 2019. GPT-2, a larger and more powerful model containing 1.5 billion parameters, drew attention with its text generation and understanding capabilities. GPT-3, released in 2020, had 175 billion parameters and demonstrated human-level performance in various tasks.
ChatGPT was developed by OpenAI based on the GPT-3 technology, and later, the GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 versions of this model were used. OpenAI describes GPT-4 as “more creative and collaborative.” The GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 models used in ChatGPT were trained using a technique called “Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF),” which, like its predecessors, relied on human feedback.
So, what are the most important features of the underlying technology behind ChatGPT?
- Transformer architecture: ChatGPT is based on a special neural network architecture called Transformer. The Transformer architecture uses attention mechanisms to enable language models to learn context and meaning more effectively. This significantly improves their ability to understand and generate text.
- Pre-training and fine-tuning: ChatGPT undergoes a two-stage training process. In the first stage, called pre-training, the model is trained on large amounts of text data found on the internet. During this process, the model acquires knowledge about grammar, syntax, and various subjects. In the second stage, the model is customised for specific tasks through a process called fine-tuning, enabling it to produce accurate and meaningful responses to user inputs.
- Extensive training data: ChatGPT’s success largely relies on its wide and diverse training data. The model is trained using texts collected from books, articles, blogs, and other sources. As a result, ChatGPT gains knowledge about a wide range of topics and utilises this information when answering users’ questions.
- Human-like communication: ChatGPT provides human-like communication using natural and fluent language. This is made possible thanks to the model’s natural language processing capabilities and training processes.
The technology behind ChatGPT, combining advanced neural network architecture, detailed training processes, and extensive training data, offers a high-performance language model for understanding and generating text. As a result, it provides fast and effective responses, emerging as a critical tool for accessing information. It establishes a very close, natural, and fluent communication with humans.
In which areas will ChatGPT create a transformation in the business world?
As people with different profiles use ChatGPT for various purposes, its use cases continue to be discovered. ChatGPT, considered the latest milestone in natural language processing technology, promises significant transformations in education and business. Some areas where ChatGPT is expected to create rapid transformation include:
Customer Services and Support
Traditional customer services will struggle to meet today’s customers’ expectations for speed and accuracy, if they don’t undergo a transformation. Customer service is considered the first sector to be impacted by natural language processing technology. Chatbots and virtual assistants integrated with ChatGPT increase customer satisfaction by responding more quickly and effectively to users’ issues. These systems are used to answer frequently asked questions and perform certain transactions.
Content Creation and Editing:
One of the areas where ChatGPT will be effectively used is creative writing and editing. AI significantly simplifies marketing professionals’ work in creating blog posts, social media content, emails, and even ad copy. Moreover, ChatGPT is used for correcting and editing texts, addressing grammar mistakes, and solving style issues. In addition, language processing features such as automatic translation, text analysis, and summarization seem likely to enable more efficient collaboration in the global business world.
Marketing and Sales
We can anticipate that ChatGPT will contribute to the development of marketing and sales strategies by analysing consumer trends, establishing effective communication with the target audience, and optimising product or service promotions.
Human Resources
ChatGPT has the potential to create a transformation in the field of human resources by speeding up and optimising recruitment processes. It can be used for resume reviews, question-and-answer systems guiding the recruitment process, and digital assistants managing recruitment processes.
Education and Training:
ChatGPT can support students and teachers in the education sector, making the learning process more efficient. Students can use ChatGPT as a resource, and teachers can benefit from this AI tool for creating lesson materials, providing feedback to students, and improving classroom management processes.
Data Analysis and Reporting:
Since ChatGPT is capable of processing and understanding large amounts of data, it can be effectively used in data analysis and reporting processes. As a result, businesses and researchers can obtain critical information from datasets and transform complex data into understandable reports.
Product and Service Recommendations:
ChatGPT can also provide product and service recommendations. When users request product and service suggestions based on specific categories or features, ChatGPT can make suitable recommendations thanks to its extensive database and natural language processing capabilities. However, ChatGPT may not provide the most up-to-date product and service information since, as of this post, its knowledge base was cut off in 2021.
Innovation and Product Development
ChatGPT can help generate new ideas and concepts, accelerating the product development process and contributing to businesses becoming more competitive in innovation.
Personal Assistant
ChatGPT can assist users in their daily lives with agenda management, reminders, weather updates, and many other tasks. With this feature, it can be used as a “personal assistant” for both work and personal life.
What risks and limitations does it consist?
Although ChatGPT has the potential to transform various aspects of the business world thanks to its natural language processing capabilities, it also brings some risks and limitations. The following concerns, which have been addressed by the OpenAI team, are notable in this regard:
Misleading or incorrect information: ChatGPT is trained on large datasets and cannot verify the accuracy of the information it has learned. As a result, it can produce responses containing false, outdated, or misleading information.
Inappropriate or biassed responses: The model can occasionally generate inappropriate, offensive, or biassed responses due to biases in the training data or attempts to predict what users might want to hear.
Sensitivity to input phrasing: The quality of ChatGPT’s response can be affected by minor changes in the phrasing of the input query. By slightly altering the phrasing, you can get a different or more accurate response. Therefore, knowing how to use ChatGPT is an important skill that will become increasingly valuable in the business.
Verbosity and overuse of specific phrases: ChatGPT tends to be overly verbose in its responses and can overuse certain expressions, making its responses unnecessarily lengthy or repetitive.
Lack of understanding context or user intent: Despite its advanced natural language understanding capabilities, ChatGPT can still struggle to grasp complex context, nuances, or the intent behind a user’s question, resulting in irrelevant, incomplete, ambiguous, or inadequate responses.
Security and privacy concerns: When using ChatGPT for sensitive applications or processing personal information, ensuring the security and privacy of user data is important. It is necessary to take security measures when using ChatGPT in cases where personal data is processed.
Dependency on the training dataset: ChatGPT’s performance is directly related to the quality and scope of its training dataset. It can lack information about very recent events or developments and may struggle to provide accurate answers on topics that are not well-represented in the training data.
Of course, we know that the OpenAI team continuously improves the GPT series and enhances ChatGPT’s capabilities with new models. However, we can still say that some issues will only be resolved in the medium to long term. Regarding these risks and limitations, it is critically important for developers and users to thoroughly test, monitor, and take security measures before using ChatGPT in their applications.
Where is natural language processing technology and ChatGPT heading?
Yakın gelecekte doğal dil işleme teknolojisinde yaşanacak gelişmelerle birlikte, bu teknolojinin çok daha fazla kullanım alanında devreye alınacağını söyleyebiliriz. Önümüzdeki dönemde doğal dil işleme alanında öngörilen gelişmelerden bazıları şöyle:
- Developing more sophisticated models with higher comprehension success.
- Models will be able to apply the knowledge and skills they have previously learned to new situations more effectively.
- Progress will be made towards general artificial intelligence systems. Natural language processing systems will integrate better with other AI components, leading to more general AI systems.
- Natural language processing models will be trained in more languages and dialects.
- As the impact of the expansion of use cases, the need for regulation in areas such as ethics, bias, and security will grow. Focus will be on addressing privacy, security, and limiting harmful content.
With all these developments, the interaction between humans and AI will become more natural, and AI systems will become more widespread. Natural language processing systems will become an integral part of tools and platforms used in our daily tasks.
At CBOT, we have integrated our product, CBOT Platform, with the groundbreaking ChatGPT. Now, CBOT Platform works together with the model behind ChatGPT, which allows us to take the value we provide to our customers a step further and have a greater presence in the end user’s life. To learn more about the value we have created with ChatGPT, which we have been closely following since the R&D stage, please contact us at hi@cbot.ai.