In the first of our video series, Red River’s co-founder Kieren Johnstone, talks through why we all need ChatGPT in our lives.
This is the most significant development in tech since the 90s. As such, very quickly this will become the most significant thing to happen to the world of business, to commerce, to how people work and how they live.
Everyone will feel the impact of this soon – and everyone seeing this video should take note. If you haven’t already started to look at how this new wave of AI is going to transform what you do, what your business does or what your product does, start now, or be left behind.
There’s no shortage of buzzwords and trends in tech – rarely is the hype backed up with real-world transformative uses. In this case, it is.
I’m talking about the massive flood of innovation, experimentation and exploitation we’re seeing off the back of OpenAI’s releases of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4.
This is a quick video to give a brief overview of the tech – what it can do, what its shortcomings are, and what YOU should do right now. It’s a huge topic, so feel free to ask for a follow-up on any particular aspect.
First, GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. Basically, it’s a system that generates text. Given a prompt, it will progressively produce text that it statistically believes answers or progresses that prompt.
There is obviously a lot more to the underlying mechanisms, a lot of detail. If you’re interested in how it works, some links will be included with this video. For the time being, lets understand the impact of the tech.
GPT-4 can:
- Pass the bar exam with a score in the top 10%
- Come up with meal ideas given a photo of the contents of a fridge
- Be given a photo or image and explain why its funny
- Digest and summarise text, or read entire documents and answer questions about their content
- Work in, or translate between, 27 languages
- Do the same for a huge variety of programming languages
- Create simple websites – HTML, Javascript, CSS – given a brief in the format of a handwritten note on a napkin
- Generate content – articles, summaries, tweets, songs, poems – when given instructions specifying topic, style, rules or examples
- Discuss, debate and inform on almost any topic
- Read a contract and answer questions about it – which areas should you be concerned about?
- Generate bespoke interview questions
Those are just the basics. The real power comes from its ability to *use tools*, or build it into other apps, platforms or services. Here’s some of the ways developers are experimenting and innovating with it:
- Microsoft integrated it into Bing, such that when asked a question, *it* performs web searches, digests and understands the results to give appropriate answers
- It will integrate with Wolfram Alpha to access a vast amount of knowledge about maths, science, and the world as a whole. This also gives it access to very powerful visualisation tools, for summarising data.
- Various experiments to add natural-language interface to creative tools such as Blender or Unity
- @jacksonfall on Twitter gave it a budget of $100 and told it to make as much money as possible
This should have your attention. If you’re wondering what to do – start with this:
- Play with GPT-4 at openai.com
- Keep a tab open and try using it as an assistant throughout your day
Not sure if or how GPT-4 might help or transform your business or industry? Why not ask GPT-4.
If you have questions or comments, feel free to comment on this video. If you’d like to talk about ways Red River can help you with your strategy on this, drop me an email – [email protected].
If you’ve found the video interesting, here’s some further reading and useful links –
What Is ChatGPT Doing … And Why Does It Work? An excellent, very long-form article by Stephen Wolfram, explaining the details of how it works, almost from first principles.
Simply explained: how does GPT work? A shorter introduction to how it all works, as well as discussions around the impact of GPT.
The Art of ChatGPT Prompting Interesting free e-book about writing effective prompts. Updated over time.
Awesome ChatGPT Prompts GitHub repository of useful prompts.
GPT-4 exhibits “sparks of general intelligence” Overview of Microsoft’s paper which suggests GPT-4 shows a hint of AGI.
Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4 The paper itself.
ChatGPT Gets Its “Wolfram Superpowers”! Explanation of the tooling that hooks ChatGPT into Wolfram Alpha.
Here are 5 ways workers can use GPT-4 to improve productivity