ChatGPT: What it is and how it works?

What is ChatGPT?

Hollywood-produced films based on artificial intelligence and rogue robots are taking over the world and destroying humanity with their designs in the “Terminator” and “The Matrix” franchises, to name a few. It was purely a work of fiction back then, but now the better part of the movies - power of artificial intelligence - is beginning to be a real thing and one can’t turn away from the numerous benefits that come with the technology.

The generative tools come as "chatbots". There are many of them available with experts arguing which one is the best. ChatGPT is always in the discussion and is in the limelight in the professional industry. Companies use it for literary, visual, or administrative tasks.

Many people think of it as the ultimate solution for problems, while others have a different or no opinion at all. However, its rising popularity was enough for software giants to integrate it into their products to make users more productive and tinker with new ideas to bring diversity.

ChatGPT has changed the dynamics of several fields. It is designed by OpenAI and is described as a Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) and gained popularity (notoriety for some) for giving human-like text results based on the prompts.

Its users are taking full advantage to create high-quality results but the secret of their success lies in their clever use of prompts (the term previously mentioned in the article) especially when it comes to writing academic papers or getting high-quality pictures via different tools (Nightcafe, Dall-E, etc).

How to start working with ChatGPT

It is fairly easy to begin working with ChatGPT. There are several providers that you can use for a quick start with AI in your daily life, but we will show you how it is done with Textie AI. The first step is to create a new account. 

The second step is to choose the right package you want to go with. The good news is that ChatGPT is included in every package so you don't have to worry about that. But the Pro and Meta packages includes some really powerful features, like translations with AI, creating presentations or even working with sound. 

Once you have your account, all you need to do is navigate from the dashboard to AI Chat. As You can see, with Textie you have many more options, but for now, we will stick with the ChatGPT, because that is a great first step to the world of artificial intelligence.

And from there, you can start you journey with AI. The amazing think is that you can start with typing anything, but the tricky part is that not everything will be well received by AI and you have to remember one think - the better the question, the better the anwer.

AI Prompts - A Trusted Ally

Before we get to the nitty gritty of ChatGPT's technical functionality, it is important to understand the role of these "prompts". In simple words, the term refers to the instructions fed for getting desired results. For example, we can ask the platform to "write a song about racial discrimination in the United States" or "draw a portrait of a man eating a burger while sitting on a bench at Central Park."

ChatGPT usually relies on prompts to give results. They are categorized into "good" or "bad" prompts.

• Good prompt: A good AI prompt contains clear instructions on what the final product should be. The user should be descriptive and concise by mentioning the objectives for the tasks.
• Bad prompt: A bad prompt is everything that a good prompt isn't. They contain grammatical errors, confusing sentence structures, and poor instructions. For example, "Predict the outcome of world hunger in 2027" or "Please explain the concept of authentic cuisine in a five-word sentence."

You should understand that ChatGPT can be tricky to work especially if you don't understand the backs or are clueless about its modus operandi. The generative tool creates content owing to its specific databases, strengths, and the information that is available online.

ChatGPT is apt at producing child-like simple essays as well as writing simple content the "Bertrand Russell way".

It is important to make yourself comfortable with the platform by experimenting with prompts before making it a trusted ally for the content creation or other daily tasks.

Technical Functionalities of ChatGPT

Let's discuss the basics of the model before diving into the technical aspects of the generative tool. As mentioned before, the P in GPT stands for "pre-trained," and this phrase is an important part of its content generation and problem-solving mechanism.

Supervised vs Unsupervised Learning

The AI models used "supervised learning" to develop their underlying algorithms before ChatGPT was around. They were equipped with a database with photos of different animals paired with text descriptions by humans. This "training data" proved to be a hassle for tech companies as it required high production costs.

The situation still hasn't improved today, as the information has not been labelled and categorised.

GPT uses a generative pre-training process that contains rules and is equipped with large sets of unlabeled data. It was left "unsupervised" to crunch through all this data and to come up with its own interpretation.

Transformer Architecture

ChatGPT uses a model known as "Transformer-based architecture", which allows the tool to harness the potential of the sophisticated model to detect dependencies between words, phrases, and sequences without sequential processing instead of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) unlike those in the past.

It has encoder and decoder layers for text generation and comprehension. The encoder layer processes input sequences and converts them into vectors that capture the contextual information of the text.

Self-Attention Mechanism

The self-attention mechanism is at the heart of Transformer-based architecture as it allows the model to understand the importance of different words in a sentence dynamically. The AI-powered tool can focus more on relevant parts of the input text and provide coherent and contextually appropriate responses.

Pre-Training and Tuning

ChatGPT uses rigorous pre-training and fine-tuning processes before creating generated text. It detects vast amounts of text data sourced from the internet during the pre-training phase which makes the model learn the nuances of language, syntax, and semantics.

This helps the generative AI tool to predict the next word in a sentence depending on the preceding words. It internalises patterns in language and builds a robust understanding of grammar and context.

ChatGPT fine-tunes its findings according to datasets or tasks. The refinement adjusts the parameters to work for particular applications. For example, the model can give correct answers for customer support scenarios. This process ensures versatility in different domains and fulfils demands.

The attention mechanism works at multiple levels within its transformer architecture. It calculates the attention scores to determine the significance of each word or token in the input sequence when processing the text for refinement. ChatGPT improves its comprehension and generates responses that maintain coherence and relevance while considering attending to relevant tokens.

Divide and Conquer

The tokenisation refers to ChatGPT segmenting the texts into smaller units by interacting with prompts and giving numerical representation. It allows the generative tool to work according to vocabulary and linguistic variations effectively. The division makes the language easy for the platform to understand the instructions and produce quick and efficient computation.

Using ChatGPT in Everyday Life

It is pertinent to mention that ChatGPT reshaped our personal and professional lives. The AI-driven platform is a trusted ally for the content creation or other daily tasks.

Boost Productivity and Creativity

The platform has taken the content creation industry by storm whether it be creating a literary masterpiece an eye-catching picture or a viral video for social media with a unique twist using writing styles and color palettes. Writers and visual artists can use the features to push the boundaries of creativity with fresh perspectives (theme, directions, and lighting).

Pushing the Boundaries of Software Engineering

ChatGPT redefines the software engineering industry by creating codes, and troubleshooting problems while allowing users to work on tasks where human supervision is paramount.  For example, a software engineer is tasked to work on a football game. He decides to let the ChatGPT tool design minor features (ball and shirt colours) as he works on complex tasks (player likenesses and stadium designs) for the project.

Reimagining Literary Works and Media Content

ChatGPT is giving new meaning to the entertainment and media industries thanks to the prompts. It can generate compelling storylines, write dialogues or create caricatures. Social media users are rising to celebrity status through reimagining certain scenarios such as "What if Walter White survived" or "The Trial of Kevin McCallister". The platform enhances storytelling by reimagining plots through literary and visual creativity.

Personalize Marketing Strategies

The generative AI tool is making its presence felt in the marketing world by allowing marketers to personalise campaigns while keeping the needs and preferences of a targeted audience in mind. It helps them create slogans related to the healthcare sector to boost sales of medical equipment, medicines, or appliances.

Giving New Meaning to the Healthcare Industry

ChatGPT may be a helpful tool for healthcare professionals and aspiring doctors by helping them understand the basics of the profession. The chatbot can be used for diagnosing a disease and curing it along with working on tedious tasks such as administrative work.

Financial Assistance

The generative tool has given a new meaning to everyday life with a platform that makes us more productive by creating engaging content and suggesting recommendations on how to go about our lives. The user can ask ChatGPT to "share tips for savings" and it will share suggestions.

Personal Problem Solver

ChatGPT allows users to gain knowledge and use AI-generated recommendations for finding solutions to certain problems whether academic, financial, or personal. You can ask for suggestions to "impress your significant others on Valentine's Day" or "steps to garnish a ravenous beef tenderloin".

ChatGPT is only a begining

ChatGPT is a testament to the technological advancement. The AI-driven platform uses advanced NLP techniques that create human-like interactions through prompts. The use of Transformer-based architecture accompanied by pre-training and fine-tuning capabilities allows it to answer questions and solve problems ranging from content creation to savings to marketing strategies.

ChatGPT remains at the forefront of innovation and redefines how humans and technology interact with each other in different scenarios, but there is still a lot before us.