Entrepreneur | ChatGPT: What Is It and How Does It Work?

Entrepreneur | ChatGPT: What Is It and How Does It Work?

By Entrepreneur Staff • Feb 16, 2023

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ChatGPT has recently taken the news cycle by storm. The artificial intelligence language processor was launched for public use in December 2022 and gained popularity faster than juggernauts like Instagram and TikTok.

Since its introduction to the public, ChatGPT has reached 57 million active monthly users and is expected to have surpassed 100 million in January — a feat it took TikTok nine months and Instagram two and a half years to do.

With so much frenzy swirling around the program, you may have several questions about the technology. What is it? How does it work? Can anyone use it? Is it coming for everyone's jobs? Keep reading for the full rundown on ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence program developed by a company called OpenAI. In 2015, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever and Wojciech Zaremba founded OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research organization. OpenAI has other programs, but ChatGPT was introduced in 2018.

ChatGPT is based on GPT-3, the third model of the natural language processing project. The technology is a pre-trained, large-scale language model that uses GPT-3 architecture to sift through an immense pool of internet data and sources to reference as its knowledge base.

This AI is a well of knowledge, but its ability to communicate is what sets it apart from other technology.

It has been fine-tuned for several language generation tasks, including language translation, summarization, text completion, question-answering and even human diction.

ChatGPT is a transformer-based neural network that provides answers and data with human writing patterns. The AI has been programmed with endless amounts of text data to understand context, relevancy and how to generate human-like responses to questions.

Other fast facts about ChatGPT include:

When it comes to high-level AI, there are several terms used to explain how the technology works that need explaining themselves.

See below for a list of key terms that will help during the rundown of ChatGPT.

ChatGPT uses a vast neural network to produce the human-like language through which it communicates. But how does that process happen?

Take a look below for a step-by-step breakdown of the process:

ChatGPT has extensive capabilities that will likely change the landscape of many industries.

The artificial intelligence program can complete tasks like:

Keep reading to find out more about each capability.

ChatGPT is nothing without its text generation, as that is how it communicates with its human users. The program uses its pre-trained database to intake inputs and prompts and generates the appropriate response in a natural, human-like text structure.

If you've ever wished to have a friend or a sibling that could finish your sentences, ChatGPT might just be the way to go.

ChatGPT can finish your inputted sentence based on content and meaning if you supply the beginning. It might not always be the ending you wanted, but the capability is there.

For example, if you typed a command asking to finish the sentence, "The rainbow is…." You might be thinking, "The rainbow is beautiful." But ChatGPT might respond, "Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet." This is because it pulls from its pre-trained knowledge to find the answer. It might not be able to read your mind, but it can read its data.

ChatGPT can answer every question that is part of its pre-trained knowledge. This will include world knowledge and general facts.

The program can also answer questions in the format that you like. So based on your preference, you can command ChatGPT to answer in bullet points, a list or short answers.

If you input a long text into ChatGPT and command it to summarize the information, it will do so. You should not expect ChatGPT to summarize full-length novels, but a few pages of text is possible as it can handle up to 4095 tokens.

Just like Google Translate, ChatGPT can translate from one language to another, including:

The program uses its neural networks to form syntax and structures like when outputting English. And much like Google Translate, it is not a perfect science. While the AI is incredibly advanced, it may miss some grammar, semantics and other details of foreign languages.

One of ChatGPT's biggest highlights is that it can respond in human-like, conversational language.

This is a helpful way to receive and digest the output. It can also be useful for companies with ecommerce sites that want to integrate conversational interfaces for chatbots, virtual assistants and other applications.

ChatGPT can actually determine sentiment or human feeling when analyzing text. For example, when a customer leaves a review on an ecommerce site, ChatGPT can analyze the text and determine if it is positive, negative or neutral.

This can be extremely useful for companies completing market research to gather data on their products and services.

ChatGPT can identify the names of people, organizations and locations. Keep in mind that ChatGPT's neural network lexicon only spans until 2021, so anything that exists after that will not be accessible.

The grammar engine of your dreams has arrived. ChatGPT is all about language, which means it's an expert on parts of speech. If you need a refresher on nouns, verbs, adjectives and sentence structures, ChatGPT is a great resource.

Many people are raising concerns that ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence programs will take human jobs. While that might be true to an extent, AI can also make workstreams more efficient and create a smoother process when used correctly. See below which industries can benefit from ChatGPT and how you can implement it.

ChatGPT is a way to provide 24/7 ecommerce site support for consumers. Train ChatGPT as a chatbot to answer FAQs and support requests.

ChatGPT will help with time and resources, as artificial intelligence can assist more customers and provide cheaper labor for companies. In turn, it gives time back to human employees to focus on customers with more complex needs.

ChatGPT has been a hot topic when it comes to education. While you can use it for good, like educational chatbots, personalized assistance and feedback, it can also provide an easier way for students to plagiarize essays and other school work.

Healthcare is an industry that has grown increasingly reliant on chatbots to assist patients with health concerns, information and advice and connect them to the best healthcare provider.

More than any other industry, humans must double-check the reliability of ChatGPT's information to ensure safety.

ChatGPT can cover a significant amount of ground in marketing.

Marketers can utilize the program for several operations, including:

There are many AI programs constructed by many different companies that operate in a similar way to ChatGPT. Some of the most notable ones include:

Although ChatGPT is one of the most advanced AI NLPs, it has its limitations.

ChatGPT might have biases embedded in its training data, like any other machine learning model. This can be biased, including gender bias, racial bias and ageism.

With any technology, there can be privacy concerns that come with it. ChatGPT was built off of massive amounts of data input, which means that anyone who contributed to the data training process is possibly vulnerable, as that data is now forever stored and could also be used.

While ChatGPT is incredibly intelligent, its database does include the Internet — and not everything online is true. Therefore, there is no unwavering guarantee of information accuracy when using ChatGPT.

Again, ChatGPT is highly intelligent but can still struggle to understand certain words, sentences and questions, which can lead to off-topic responses.

No matter how smart artificial intelligence is, common sense and personality are human qualities. And while ChatGPT is trained in sentiment, there are still limitations to certain human experiences, goals and understandings.

ChatGPT is a powerful AI program that proves another step forward in natural language processing. Perhaps its most impressive ability is generating human-like output after analyzing the human input.

From language translation and text summarization to research and automation, ChatGPT has several uses that can be applied to various industries. Keep in mind that, like any technology, ChatGPT has its limitations, so it's always best to check its work and have a backup plan.

If you're interested in learning more about where artificial intelligence and where it's heading, visit Entrepreneur.com for everything you need to know.