What is ChatGPT? | What the Tech?

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (WHAT THE TECH?) — Maybe you’ve heard of a new software program called “ChatGPT.” It’s a powerful machine learning tool being banned from school-issued devices across the country because, well, it’s too human.

ChatGPT, short for “Generative Pre-Trained Transformer,” is a machine-learning model that uses deep-learning techniques to generate human-like text. It has the ability to complete a given prompt or answer questions, making it a powerful tool for tasks such as language translation, conversation simulation, and text summarization.

How good is it? Everything above was not written by me, but by this bot called ChatGPT. I just entered “create a television news report about ChatGPT” in the prompt. That’s the worry for educators. ChatGPT sounds so much like a real human. It’s difficult to know if a student really wrote the paper or just entered a prompt.

I tried several things:

• Asking it to write a 500-word essay on Abraham Lincoln, which it immediately did in a matter of seconds
• I entered “write a country song”, which it did with verses, a chorus, and a bridge.
• It wrote a 200-word explanation of artificial intelligence. In French.
• It even created an essay on President Ronald Reagan, with references and citations.

Of course, it isn’t just for cheating in school. It can come up with lesson plans, write resumes and cover letters, and carry on a conversation about anything.

ChatGPT is a website but in the past few months, developers have flooded the app stores with apps that require paid subscriptions. These are not from the ChatGPT developer.

ChatGPT is actually difficult to use the website sometimes because so many people around the world are asking it to do things. It’s fun to use, and quite amazing really. It’s another example of how it is getting more and more difficult to determine whether something is real, or artificial intelligence.