What Is ChatGPT: How Does it Work, and is it Safe to Use?

What Is ChatGPT How Does it Work, and is it Safe to Use
Your questions on what ChatGPT is, whether it's free, how it works, and what it can or can't do are all answered in this guide

ChatGPT is a conversational AI developed by OpenAI, and it is revolutionizing the way we interact with technology. The generation is powered by GPT-3.5, a large language model trained on over 175 billion parameters.

It has been fine-tuned to understand the context of a conversation and generate responses that are appropriate, relevant, and engaging to the AI prompts that the user gives it.

The model can handle a wide range of topics, from simple queries to complex discussions, and its responses are often indistinguishable from those of a human. 

This has made it a valuable tool for businesses looking to improve customer engagement and support or those wanting to scale content production.

Barely a month into the release of the Public research preview, this tool has been applied in different fields including media for content generation, customer service for AI chatbots, and recommendation engines. 

There are even new AI search engines such as You.com and Neeva that help you find what you’re looking for quickly by summarizing the web. 

Relationship between ChatGPT and GPT-3

GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a powerful, state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) model. 

This large language model, like its alternatives (LamDA, Chinchilla, Bloom, Replica), was trained on a massive collection of data, including web text, books, and other sources, to learn how to generate text that is natural sounding and coherent. 

It now has a new version, GPT-3.5, and it’s said that GPT-4 is on the way and expected to be more powerful, multi-modular, and generate more relevant data.

On the other hand, ChatGPT is a variant model that is built on top of GPT-3 architecture. This model takes advantage of some of GPT-3.5’s features and capabilities, enabling it to handle longer conversations with more complexity. 

It also adds features such as additional topic prediction, context understanding, and language identification, as well as custom data sets and training.

How does ChatGPT work?

What Is ChatGPT How Does it Work, and is it Safe to Use 2x md

ChatGPT creates content by predicting the next word in a sequence, given the context of the prompt. 

It uses the training it received from its massive dataset to determine the most likely next word, based on the probability of its occurrence. The model repeats this process until it generates a full response, which can be a complete answer, article, or any other form of text.

When a user gives the tool input data, popular now known as a prompt, ChatGPT analyses it, and then generates a response based on the existing training data. The output is then sent back to the user, allowing a real-time conversational experience.

These processes happen within milliseconds, thus this tool can ‘spit’ out usable information within seconds of prompting.

Benefits of using ChatGPT

a) Fast generations

One of the key benefits of using ChatGPT is its ability to save time and effort in content creation. 

Whether it’s writing an article, answering questions, or generating descriptions, ChatGPT can complete these tasks in a fraction of the time it would take you. 

b) Versatility

If you’ve been tinkering with this AI model for a while now, you might have been impressed at how versatile it can be. You can fine-tune it to help you accomplish all sorts of tasks:

  • Write a social media post targetting a specific group of people, in a given tone, and from a specified point of view
  • Tell a joke about a certain topic
  • Brainstorm ideas on a given topic, or how to go about navigating different a given task
  • Give you ideas on how to improve your document
  • Correct errors in your works, etc.
  • Translate your existing content into different languages
  • Translate code into different programming languages

This type of versatility is what has made ChatGPT a must-have tool for anyone, regardless of their background, skills, or lines of work.

c) Business opportunities

By mastering how to use this tool, you open yourself to a lot of business opportunities. You can use it to produce content for clients, grow your own blog, or even help you code a web application that you can then monetize.

Here’s a great read on how to make money with AI tools. The real power though comes with leveraging the base tool and other AI tools built on top of it.

The most powerful AI tools for making money online include

  • Jasper AI — which comes with Jasper chat, recommended for long-form content writing
  • Content at Scale — This tool helps you generate detailed, most relevant SEO blog posts that are 2600+ words long with just a click and a few customizations. Best for blogging and freelance work.
  • Bertha AI: Best for WordPress writing 
  • Writesonic: Best alternative to Jasper, and has its own ChatGPT variant that can browse the web for up-to-date information.

Features of ChatGPT

  • Context Awareness: ChatGPT has the ability to understand the context of a conversation and generate relevant, insightful, and appropriate responses, making it a highly effective conversational AI tool.
  • Scalability: As a large language model, ChatGPT is capable of handling a large volume of requests, making it ideal for large-scale projects and systems.
  • Customization: You can fine-tune this tool to fit the tone and style of a particular brand, allowing for a more personalized experience for your users.
  • Continual Improvement: You can bet that this tool will be 10X more powerful in the next 3 or so years evolving, as the base model is being enhanced as the company nears the launch of GPT-4. 
  • Versatility: ChatGPT can be used for a wide range of applications, including customer service, content creation, and even language translation.
  • API and Integrations: ChatGPT can be integrated into existing systems, providing an enhanced level of customer service and engagement. ChatGPT API is coming soon into your OpenAI playground… you can apply to join the waitlist once logged in. 
  • Multilingual support: This model is multilingual, meaning it understands commands in different languages and can generate responses in those languages. However, it’s most proficient in English, as its training data was primarily in this language.

ChatGPT for AI content generation

One of the most popular uses of ChatGPT is content generation. Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, this simple tool can help you create any type of content. 

You can use it to create:

  • Social media content
  • Full articles and SEO blog posts
  • Resumes and cover letters
  • Sales copy based on popular copywriting frameworksConclusion:
  • Fictional stories
  • Use cases and case studies to grow your business
  • Twitter threads to help you build an influence on Twitter
  • Marketing emails and newsletters
  • Cold emails
  • LinkedIn posts
  • LinkedIn outreach copy, etc.

Can ChatGPT code?

Beyond text generation, this model can also generate code. So, yes, ChatGPT can code for you, but you still need to tweak the generated code to make it functional.

ChatGPT is able to do this by leveraging Codex, OpenAI’s powerful model for code generation. It’s proficient in more than 12 programming languages, including Python, PHP, Javascript, and frameworks such as React and Angular.

With ChatGPT’s natural language understanding and Codex’s code generation, ChatGPT is thus able to produce usable code snippets for real-world projects.

You can also use this tool to help you create formulas and scripts for your day-to-day applications such as Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. 

Other applications:

  • Parsing complex codes
  • Debugging code as ChatGPT can be an excellent debugging assistant
  • Developing games
  • Developing simple web applications and browser extensions
  • Writing scripts for common apps
  • Formatting documents with simple text commands
  • Rewriting code to make it more efficient and optimized
  • Explaining code

ChatGPT FAQs

Do you need an account to use ChatGPT?

To use ChatGPT, you need to have an OpenAI account. You can open one by navigating to chat.openai.com

Is ChatGPT free?

Yes, ChatGPT is free during the research preview and it’s the company has insinuated that it will always have a free version of the model. So, yes, your beloved AI tool isn’t going anywhere, at least not yet.

What is ChatGPT Plus?

ChatGPT Plus is a new plan recently introduced, that allows members to pay their way into faster generations, availability of the tool even during peak hours, faster response times, and priority access to new features and updates.

How much is ChatGPT Plus?

While earlier claims had indicated that the paid version would go for $42/month, OpenAI has since publicized that ChatGPT is available for just $20/month, which is a relief to many solo freelancers, and creatives.

What is Constitutional AI?

Constitutional AI is a type of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that is designed to adhere to a set of ethical principles and values. These AIs are trained on behavioral principles that help them respond more comprehensively to adversarial questions.

The goal here is to ensure that AI systems are developed and used in a way that respects the rights and values of individuals and society. 

Thus Constitutional AI is an important part of ensuring that AI systems are used responsibly and ethically.

Are ChatGPT and Claude Constitutional AIs?

Not clear. ChatGPT hasn’t claimed that it’s a constitutional AI, but since its launch, it has made progress in terms of ensuring that the AI is used for good. It’s now become more difficult to prompt the AI to generate hateful content or give malicious advice. 

Claude AI, on the other hand, claims that its model is better at tackling adversarial questions since its training employed the concept of Constitutional AI.

Is ChatGPT safe?

Large language models like ChatGPT aren’t safe as they often tend to produce biased and harmful content. The bias comes from its training data and fine-tuning is necessary to reduce such biases.

Another major concern is that ChatGPT can produce quality content that seems plausible, and convincingly so at a face value. Given that users then distribute this misconstrued information in terms of blog posts, and other content types is something quite concerning.

For businesses, publishing such plausible content can be damaging to their brands.

Other risks include the potential of generative models to be used by hackers to write and improve their malicious codes, as well as email spammers finding ways to bypass spam folders by using completely unique email copies as this process can now be automated. 

ChatGPT: The Future of AI-powered communication

ChatGPT is always being improved, and I believe we haven’t seen anything yet, as impressive as it already is. 

As AI continues to advance, it’s exciting to think about the possibilities for language generation and other applications of AI in the future.

With over 20 billion dollars in secured funding, OpenAI is investing heavily in research and development, with the goal of making ChatGPT even more accurate, versatile, and efficient. 

This means that the model will continue to evolve and improve, making it an indispensable tool for businesses and individuals alike.

The base model, GPT, will become even more powerful with the launch of GPT-4. Soon brands of any scale would be able to train the AI to generate content that matches their brand style, voice, and even editorial guidelines. 

They’d also be able to develop chatbots that are close enough to sound like their real customer support agents.

Companies that are building their startups on top of OpenAI’s models would come up with even more fine-tuned variants that suit different use cases, industries, and other niched applications. Needless to say, the future is brighter and AI would be more accessible. Maybe not safe, but more accessible for sure. 

Picture of AI Mode
AI Mode

AI Mode is a blog that focus on using AI tools for improving website copy, writing content faster and increasing productivity for bloggers and solopreneurs.

Am recommending these reads:

Latest GPTs

Corrupt Politicians

By: Community

Corrupt Politicians GPT
Uncover corruption cases associated with any politician by simply typing their name.

Kenya Law Guide

By: Community

Kenya Law Guide GPT
Your go-to assistant for understanding Kenyan laws, legal procedures, and obtaining legal advice.

Smart Contracts

Blockchain

By: Community

Smart Contracts GPT Logo
Analyze tokens and contracts on Ethereum, Polygon, and other EVM-compatible networks.

Latest AI Tools