Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to news in the morning of February 9, Beijing time, ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chat robot, has become a phenomenal service that has quickly spread all over the world in just a few weeks. It attracts users even faster than previous popular social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.

According to Similarweb, it took only two months for the service to reach a staggering number of monthly active users in January before it was launched at the end of November last year. According to UBS research: "in the 20 years we have focused on the Internet, we have never remembered that a consumer Internet application can grow at such a rate." As a developer of ChatGPT, OpenAI has recently ranked among the top 50 visitors in the world, according to Digital-adoption.com.

By contrast, it took two and a half years for Instagram to attract 100 million months of active use, and even TikTok took nine months.

The astonishing growth rate of ChatGPT shows that it can not only help people accomplish many tasks, but also satisfy people's general curiosity about humanoid machines. Will this service be the prelude to a new era of artificial intelligence? Or will it fall quickly after people gradually reach its upper limit? Experts can't agree on this.

The reasons for the rapid popularity of ChatGPT and its potential impact on the future will be analyzed below.

What is ChatGPT? ChatGPT is a chat robot developed by American artificial intelligence company OpenAI. As a general artificial intelligence, it can answer almost all the questions you ask with extremely fast speed and clear language. While many previous chatbots can only respond to specific keywords or triggers, ChatGPT can answer complex questions and quickly give complex questions for an entire article, covering a variety of topics.

ChatGPT can do this because it has a strong neural network and has been trained using huge amounts of data on the Internet. The so-called neural network is a kind of software that simulates human brain neurons. This technology has been around for years, and Yann LeCun, Meta's chief artificial intelligence scientist, said recently that ChatGPT was "not very innovative" and was still basically based on Transformer neural network technology released by Google in 2017.

Margaret Mitchell, a famous artificial intelligence theorist who once worked for Google, admits that "most of us are surprised by the popularity of ChatGPT". "this technology does not advance any underlying breakthroughs," she said. "

But ChatGPT is indeed the first major artificial intelligence project that the public can use and play with. Other companies, such as Google, are held back by the uncertainty and potential damage caused by the new technology, for example, they worry that it could spread false information and hate speech. At the same time, OpenAI chose to bring its products to market this fall to cope with potential competition.

Although ChatGPT uses complex underlying technology, its visual interface is intuitive: you just type in a text box, just like you do with Google. This simple interface allows people of all ages and backgrounds to interact with it quickly. Another strength of ChatGPT is its flexibility. If you don't like the answers provided by the system, you can make suggestions and the system will adjust accordingly.

What are people doing on ChatGPT? The reason why ChatGPT has become popular rapidly stems from its novelty. For example, some users will ask him to create a biblical passage about taking peanut butter sandwiches out of the VCR, while others will ask him to create an Elvis Presley-themed fantasy weapon. Within seconds, it gave options like "Love Me Tender Dagger" and "Blue Suede Sword".

But soon, the use of ChatGPT was no longer limited to these tricks, but began to infiltrate into the professional field. ChatGPT can brainstorm with users, write articles and code. People began to use it to write job applications, course assignments, academic papers, and even program scripts in different languages. In fact, Similarweb data show that programming and developing software have become the main use cases of ChatGPT.

Sean Ellul, co-founder of 3D development studio Metaverse Architects, says ChatGPT has "revolutionized our efficiency and creativity" and uses the chat robot to brainstorm code, prepare articles and envision new projects. As a result, many companies have adjusted their business models and deployed them into their workflows. For example, Buzzfeed announced that it will use this technology to detect and personalize content.

But then came the problem: many school districts in the United States have banned ChatGPT in order to prevent students from submitting homework generated by artificial intelligence.

Due to the sharp increase in the attractiveness of ChatGPT, OpenAI has even been forced to reject many users, who can only see the message that "ChatGPT is running at full capacity." The company recently announced a charging policy that allows paying customers to use it during peak periods.

Will generative artificial intelligence become popular? After the popularity of ChatGPT, other companies were unable to sit still and announced that they would launch similar products. Google, for example, sounded a "red alert" in response to ChatGPT and recently announced that it would launch its own Bard in the coming weeks. Baidu is also preparing to launch a similar chat robot in March. Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company founded by former OpenAI employees, is raising millions of dollars.

As an investor in OpenAI, Microsoft is also stepping up efforts to integrate ChatGPT into its own Bing search and Teams messaging platform. All this means that generative artificial intelligence technology will soon quietly infiltrate into our daily work.

But the risk will follow. Artificial intelligence, which used to publish hate speech and false information in the past, is now used to write malicious code. "as the honeymoon period ends, there will be more and more criticism of problematic applications." Michelle said.

Michelle worries that ChatGPT may have an impact on people who use it for psychological counseling. "ChatGPT may say something vicious or bullying or give some bad advice, but it doesn't know what it means because it lacks understanding of the wider world," she said. "

She is also worried that people using ChatGPT instead of search engines will also bring risks, because ChatGPT will give the wrong answer solemnly. For example, it once wrote a detailed history of dinosaurs creating a "successful civilization". "people are more likely to accept automation." "I'm really worried that the information provided by ChatGPT will be accepted as a fact, because my cognitive bias will make me think it's telling the truth," Michelle said. "

ChatGPT's popularity has triggered an artificial intelligence arms race, which could lead its competitors to take shortcuts to compete for market share. When social media rose a decade ago, the world witnessed a similar scene, when "acting fast, breaking the rules" became the mainstream creed at the time, but security was ignored. as a result, social media played an ignominious role in inciting genocide and manipulating public opinion.

"I am worried that regulatory trends can only be dealt with passively and can only be made up for after terrible things have happened." "whatever that terrible thing is, I'm very worried," Michelle said. "

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