Chat GPT is everywhere – like that annoying overachieving cousin you just can’t seem to shake off. For you to take Chat GPT seriously, let’s talk about its academic accomplishments: 

• Medical license exam          PASS
• The bar exam                         PASS
• MBA paper                              (Scholarship retainment grade)

It also happens to be the only app in history to have reached one hundred-million followers in two months. This is major! Even TikTok took nine months to peak and join the famous app pool; no wonder Google feels insecure and has announced code red at headquarters. 

The question is: what does Chat GPT offer that Google cannot? Now that an average user has the attention span of a goldfish—no offense to goldfishes— there is a reason why TikTok and Instagram reels are users’ preferred way of content consumption: they are precise, entertaining and in other words, hit the spot immediately. Chat GPT manicures the same effect: you get your answer right away instead of having to view five other pop-up windows with information that needs to be filtered.

On a secondary level, Chat GPT can create very specific types of data outputs.Take this as an example:

Spoiler alert: The kid never got into Harvard. You get the point though; from easily accessible answers to headlines and even comedy acts, this open AI bot capitalizes on the “sit-back-n-relax” approach of an average user. 

How does it work? 

This open AI software has been trained on a “Neural” system so it functions like a human brain, just subtracting the flesh. It generates responses based on the user’s replies, allowing it to form its own memory to pull answers from. When we say ‘training database’, we are referring to ten million documents on the Microsoft Azure platform.

This brings us to Microsoft; it has been playing a few steps ahead of the AI game, looking towards investing one billion US-dollars in the AI software and having access to the best AI the tech world can offer. In addition to that, it’s trying to integrate the AI engine into their personalized search engine: “Bing”, basically the Grenchen to Google’s Regina George. Sweet rivals.

This leads us to the last question: why hasn’t the AI bot devoured Google’s virtual presence? The answer is short and simple: the room for improvement still persists, presenting users with accurate data, not false information i.e. the GPT has been informing users of Elon Musk’s death when he is very much alive and severely indebted. Additionally, it might have copyright-related dilemmas because all the data is pulled from sources on the Internet (books, journals and articles) without consent, leading to inevitable copyright lawsuits.

While Chat GPT is indeed revolutionary and an eye-opener to a future dominated by AI—which may or may not resemble the creepy science fiction novels I naively considered fiction—at present, it has its limitations. From providing factually inaccurate information to writing cringey song lyrics, Chat GPT’s usefulness is limited in certain academic spheres which require nuanced analyses and a humane, empathetic approach (take one look at a literature essay written by it, and you’ll get what I mean). However, in daily life, Chat GPT is your average user’s best friend, from suggesting best gifts for your certain someone to answering emails. Sure, it can pass the MBA exam or whatever, but most importantly, it can do this: 

By Waniya Kamil – Guest Writer