The recent surge of interest in artificial intelligence can largely be attributed to the emergence of a new generation of AI-powered chatbots that are capable of engaging in text-based conversations that are surprisingly similar to those of humans. This paradigm shift began with the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI last year, enabling millions of users to interact with an AI that produces remarkably fluent responses. Consequently, many have questioned if this development signifies a significant turning point.
There has been an abundance of hype surrounding these AI chatbots. Microsoft researchers, who were given early access to GPT4, the latest version of the underlying system behind ChatGPT, argue that it shows promising signs of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) – a machine version of human intellectual ability. Some even went as far as claiming that Google’s AI, LaMDA, possesses sentience. However, critics maintain that these AI systems are not as impressive as they appear.
Understanding the inner workings of these AI chatbots can help clear up any uncertainties surrounding their capabilities and their similarity to human thinking. At the core of these chatbots lies a large language model (LLM) – a statistical model that predicts the likelihood of certain words appearing together. To create these LLMs, massive amounts of text are fed into deep neural networks, algorithms that loosely mimic the human brain. Through this process, the models learn intricate linguistic patterns.
Insight: The emergence of AI-powered chatbots, such as ChatGPT, has sparked a debate about the extent to which these systems possess human-like thinking capabilities. While some researchers argue that these chatbots demonstrate signs of artificial general intelligence, others remain skeptical and assert that they are not as remarkable as they initially seem. Understanding how these chatbots work can help to determine their true nature.
