What Is ChatGPT & Will It Replace Human Jobs?

Jerry Wallis
18 min read
Woman looking at ChatGPT on laptop

ChatGPT is the only chatbot that can tell corny jokes, write complex computer code, and compose high-flown poetry.

Introduced by OpenAPI, ChatGPT answers complex questions in a conversational tone. The best thing about it is that it’s geared towards learning what humans mean when they ask questions so that it can provide them with more meaningful and precise answers.

When it was launched in November 2022, many users were awed by its extraordinary intelligence that provides human-like answers to many questions. Some even feared that it might eventually have the potential to change how humans interact with computers and how they use search engines in the future.

So, in this article, we will explore the brilliant and weird world of ChatGPT and understand how it can impact businesses. Without further ado, let’s get started.

What Is ChatGPT? 🤖

ChatGPT is a variant of the GPT (Generative Pre-Training Transformer) language model that was developed specifically for generating human-like text in a conversational situation. It is designed to generate natural language responses when given input from a user, making it potentially valuable for various business applications where human-like conversation with customers or clients is desirable.

The best thing about the chatbot is the dialogue format that makes it possible to answer follow-up questions, acknowledge its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. In that sense, it is truly an intelligent chatbot that is constantly evolving and learning.

After it was launched as a prototype on November 30, 2022, it quickly became a viral internet sensation, with millions of people using AI to find answers to their complex questions. People from all over the world and from various walks of life started using ChatGPT, which remains free of cost to this date.

In an interesting turn of events, this led the New York City Department of Education to ban ChatGPT on all school networks and devices as students were relying heavily on it to plagiarise their way through assignments and projects. While the ethical issues are yet to be debated, the one question that remains on everyone’s mind is, will ChatGPT remain free?

💸 Will ChatGPT Remain Free In The Future?

As of now, ChatGPT is completely free to use. However, there has been news of making it a subscription service in the future. As of January 2023, the model is released in its beta version and is free to use, but OpenAI will look to monetise the model with an average cost of single-digit cents per chat. They also added that monetisation particularly becomes important as the computing costs are skyrocketing.

The chatbot gave us a rather cryptic and diplomatic answer when asked the same question. Here’s what the AI has to say about its potential monetisation in the future.

Will ChatGPT remain free in the future?

Currently, we only know this — ChatGPT is free to use, but it will likely be monetised soon. The exact pricing and plans are yet to be revealed to the general public.

How To Use ChatGPT 💁

Because of its ability to provide human-like responses, ChatGPT has become a phenomenal buzz. More and more companies are trying their hands at this new-age chatbot, ranging from content development to customer support industries. The chatbot’s user base is bound to grow as more people become aware of its possibilities.

ChatGPT can do a wide range of things: it can answer your general information-based questions, give you suggestions on your how-to questions, tell you a funny story, help you write a rhyming poem, and provide you with a snippet of code to work on.

However, the chatbot isn’t simply a search engine or a simple chatbot that answers simple questions. The chatbot is not just trained with a few hundred samples of data; it is trained with the entire internet’s data. What’s more, it’s constantly learning and evolving through the use of reinforcement learning models. Now that’s what makes it a platform that might affect the lives of developers, bloggers, and basically, anyone who writes for a living.

For example, you might wonder, “Can ChatGPT write essays and articles?” Yes, but the quality of writing largely depends on the context you feed into the AI. Here’s what it says about its own ability to write essays.

Can ChatGPT write essays?

Businesses can leverage ChatGPT’s ability to generate engaging and relevant content for faster content creation and marketing. They can also use this chatbot to find ways to better engage with customers on social media.

The chatbot helps you write content, answer complex questions, and generate code snippets. It’s been used by people from various walks of life. Having said that, it’s more content-focused — essays, how-to ideas, simplifying content, blogs, articles, jokes, stories, etc. — but it also can generate code in multiple programming languages. If you ask ChatGPT to generate a .NET API OrdersController in CURD endpoints, it will gladly do that. It will give you the code in its entirety, and when you compile that code, chances are it will work with little or no human intervention.

Due to this, some fear that it might replace human jobs. So, are roles, such as content writers and software developers, under threat of being replaced? Well, yes and no. We will explore that further down the article. For now, let’s understand how ChatGPT works.

How Does ChatGPT Work? ⚙️

ChatGPT uses both supervised and reinforcement learning models. These approaches employ human trainers to improve the model’s performance.

While using the supervised learning model, the chatbot was provided with samples of conversations in which humans played a dual role: that of users and AI assistants. However, in the reinforcement learning model, human trainers ranked the responses received and further fine-tuned them using several iterations of optimisation techniques.

By adopting proximal policy optimisation, the trainers came up with cost-effective ways of trusting the algorithms and not using many of the expensive operations. These models were then trained with Microsoft and Azure’s supercomputing infrastructures.

🦄 Are ChatGPT’s Answers Unique?

This question has been on everyone’s mind of late. From students to content marketers to computer programmers, they all want to know if the answers generated by ChatGPT are truly unique. Or perhaps they are just generic texts with no originality at all?

We asked the same question to ChatGPT. In its defence, the chatbot said the following.

Are ChatGPT answers unique?

Well, the originality of the answers — and thereby the success of ChatGPT — depends on your prompts and the way you phrase them. Since the chatbot is capable of refining its answer as it goes, engaging in a back-and-forth conversation is the best way to find authentic answers.

Another way to generate high-quality content is by feeding the “right prompts” into the AI. Instead of asking just basic questions, if you could provide a detailed prompt and ask ChatGPT to generate content around that and later expand on that, it will give you amazingly good results.

Here’s an interesting Twitter thread on how you can use the chatbot as an advanced user and get the most out of it.

It’s essential to note that the answers to your questions depend on several factors: the input parameters, the way questions are framed, and the database the chatbot scours for content generation.

Is ChatGPT The New Search Engine? 🔎

While it’s too early to say if ChatGPT will replace Google or DuckDuckGo, it will surely become a personalised search engine portal for software developers and content creators.

ChatGPT is a new search engine that uses natural language processing and artificial intelligence to provide web users with more accurate and comprehensive results than traditional search engines.

Unlike other search engines, ChatGPT requires users to type in a conversation-style query instead of simply typing in keywords. This conversational approach allows users to quickly get the desired results without spending time refining their search terms or sorting through hundreds of irrelevant pages.

Not only does the chatbot provide more accurate results, but it also helps users find information faster. By prompting the user for more information about a topic (such as where or when it happened, who was involved, etc.), ChatGPT can generate more specific queries that would have taken longer for the user to formulate by themselves. The search engine can also understand the context and provide related topics that might help find appropriate sources of information.

ChatGPT will likely revolutionise how people search for things on the internet. Instead of relying solely on keyword searches, which often return inadequate or unrelated results, users will now have access to an AI-powered assistant who can help them refine their queries and find better answers faster.

It won’t just save you time; it could lead to an overall improvement in how we access and consume online content. In addition, this technology could potentially make specialised information more accessible than ever before — something that could greatly benefit students and researchers looking for accurate answers across multiple disciplines.

At the same time, ChatGPT presents some potential drawbacks as well. Since it relies heavily on natural language processing, there is always the risk of misinterpretation or inaccurate replies if certain words are used incorrectly or omitted entirely from a query.

Will ChatGPT Replace Programmers, Writers, & Other Roles? 👨‍💻

Programmer coding on computer

Now, let’s address the elephant in the room: the big question we’re all asking.

As people debate the possibility of ChatGPT replacing human roles like coders and writers, it’s essential to consider both sides of the argument. Some argue that the chatbot’s ability to generate content and code faster and more efficiently will eventually make programmers and content writers obsolete. Others believe that these roles will evolve but will always be necessary in some capacity.

While some believe AI can never replace human creativity, others are sceptical. They are wary of the fact that, eventually, AI might as well beat the human mind and consequently replace it. Before getting all dark and dreary, let’s first understand the bright side of things and how ChatGPT can help writers, software developers, and programmers.

ChatGPT’s ability to write and understand code can help software developers carry out their tasks faster. This can also help in cost savings for businesses, allowing writers and coders to focus on higher-level tasks. By automating certain tasks, The chatbot can allow programmers to complete projects ahead of schedule and focus on complex activities rather than being bogged down in repetitive tasks.

However, this could also mean a significant job displacement in the world of content creation and software development. If ChatGPT can perform specific tasks more efficiently and accurately than humans, it could lead to a shortage of employment opportunities for new or novice programmers and writers.

That begs the question: will ChatGPT replace writers and software developers eventually? To answer this in more detail, let’s see how the chatbot will change how a programmer or writer works in the coming days.

🌐 Better Than Google Search

Programmers these days use Google Search and StackOverflow to find answers to their questions. With ChatGPT, they can now get a personalised StackOverflow and engage with the chatbot concerning their queries. The answer ChatGPT provides will be entirely based on their question, not a similar one someone had posted ten years ago. That might make ChatGPT a programmer’s personal search engine. Of course, it’s the same for content writers who need to do plenty of focused research.

Writing Code/Content Faster

With ChatGPT, you can generate generic and repetitive code snippets, and you won’t have to spend hours writing them. Your programmers can then focus on something bigger: the overall logic of their code and how it aligns with the product’s vision.

While this sounds like a silver bullet to all programming problems, there’s something to be aware of. If your programmers don’t know what they want from the chatbot, the AI will not magically solve their coding problems. Giving ChatGPT the correct prompts based on their programming experience and knowledge will determine whether the result will be as intended.

For content writers, it’s going to provide perfectly workable drafts, snippets, and prompts to create fantastic content in a fraction of the time!

🕗 Increased Productivity & Efficiency

If your programmers spend less time searching the web for the solution and writing boring and repetitive code, that leaves them with more time. They can then handle complex domain problems and implement them as code. The primary aim of any chatbot or AI assistant should be this: to help the software developers with their code, not entirely replace them or make them obsolete.

On the other hand, content writers get more time to focus on the quality of the content while relying on answers and prompts from ChatGPT for the quantity side of things without worrying too much about accidental plagiarism.

Content writer searching for what is ChatGPT on laptop

Here’s our verdict: It’s unlikely that ChatGPT or any other language model will completely replace programmers or writers. While it and other language models can generate human-like text, they aren’t capable of replacing the creativity, problem-solving abilities, and critical thinking skills that programmers and content writers use daily.

Instead, ChatGPT and other language models are tools that can be used to assist writers in writing faster and programmers in tasks such as code generation, debugging, and data analysis. Additionally, ChatGPT and other language models cannot replace the domain knowledge and understanding of a specific field that a human programmer has.

It’s important to note that the use of GPT-based models like ChatGPT is just one of the many tools and technologies that are being developed to help programmers become more efficient and productive.

What Companies Can Do With ChatGPT 🏢

There are several ways companies can leverage ChatGPT for business growth. Some examples include:

  • Customer Service: To improve their customer service by creating automated chatbots that can answer frequently asked questions and assist customers with their inquiries.
  • Content Generation: To generate high-quality, unique content for their websites, social media, and other digital platforms.
  • Lead Generation: To generate leads by creating chatbots that can engage with potential customers and collect information about their needs and interests.
  • Data Analysis: To analyse large amounts of data, such as customer feedback and reviews, to gain insights about their products, services, and customers.
  • Personalisation: To personalise the customer experience by creating personalised content, recommendations, and offers.
  • Business Process Optimisation: To automate repetitive tasks such as data entry, form filling, and report generation.
  • Language Translation: To translate their content into multiple languages, making it accessible to a wider audience.

What You Can’t Do With ChatGPT 🚫

ChatGPT provides factual information most of the time, but you cannot guarantee that it will always do so for all the complex questions. You may as well have to go to Google to do a quick fact-check on the responses generated by it.

ChatGPT also cannot make real human reasoning. When it seems to reason, it’s because the presented reason is found in the vast data it’s been trained on. The chatbot works perfectly today when presenting information and knowledge that it has been exposed to, but it can’t do any reasoning or learn new things if an external user (that is not its creator, OpenAI) wants to teach it. It can generate new content by combining previously learned content and adding new nuances by presenting combinations that haven’t occurred before, but it can’t come up with a completely new one.

If you ask a question that demands some critical thinking, ChatGPT often fails to give intelligent or even prudent answers. For example, say you type: “How will AI chatbots like ChatGPT impact the world of publishing in the near future, and what’s your take on it?” In that case, the best it can do is give you some mundane definition of chatbots and the future of publishing — things that can already be found on the internet. In short, ChatGPT cannot do real thinking.

The chatbot sometimes inserts gibberish into the code it generates. To head off a swarm of coding BS, software site StackOverflow decided to ban ChatGPT from its digital premises for the foreseeable future. “Because the average rate of getting correct answers from ChatGPT is too low, the posting of answers created by ChatGPT is substantially harmful to the site and to users who are asking and looking for correct answers,” the StackOverflow admins wrote. Sometimes, that sounds about fair.

ChatGPT: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

Now let’s take a look at what’s so good, bad, and ugly about ChatGPT.

Good Things

One of the main advantages of ChatGPT is its ability to generate human-like text, which makes it well-suited for tasks such as conversation and language understanding. This allows it to engage in natural and fluid conversations with users, making it a useful tool for chatbots, virtual assistants, and other types of conversational systems. Additionally, because it is trained on a massive dataset of text from the internet, it has a wide range of knowledge and can respond to various topics and questions.

Another advantage of the chatbot is its ability to be fine-tuned for specific tasks or domains. This allows it to perform better on specific tasks by training it on a smaller dataset that is more relevant to the task at hand. This can be particularly useful for tasks such as language understanding, natural language processing, and text generation in specific domains like medical, legal or financial. In turn, it can be integrated easily with other systems, such as chatbots, language translation, and much more, making it a versatile tool for a wide range of applications.

In general, ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can be used to perform a wide range of tasks related to language understanding, text generation, and conversation.

Bad Things

Woman holding her head watching her laptop

One of the main downsides of ChatGPT is that it can produce biased or offensive responses. This is because the model is trained on a large dataset of text from the internet, which can contain biases and stereotypes. As a result, if the model is not properly fine-tuned or monitored, it may generate responses that perpetuate harmful stereotypes or biases. Also, the model is unaware of the social context or the potential consequences of its responses, so it may generate inappropriate or offensive responses without realising it.

Another downside of the chatbot is that it can be unreliable when it comes to understanding and responding to certain types of language inputs. For example, it may have difficulty understanding idiomatic expressions, sarcasm, or figurative language. Or anything that involves some thinking.

Additionally, the model may struggle with understanding and responding to more complex or nuanced language inputs, such as those that involve multiple layers of meaning or require a deep understanding of a particular topic or field. This can make it less reliable for certain tasks, such as language understanding and natural language processing tasks involving more complex language inputs.

⚠️ Ugly Things

One of the main “ugly” things about ChatGPT is that it can perpetuate harmful biases. Because the model is trained on a large dataset of text from the internet, which can contain biases, it can generate responses that perpetuate these biases. This can be particularly problematic for sensitive topics. To mitigate this, it is important to fine-tune the model on a diverse and unbiased dataset and to monitor its outputs to ensure that they do not perpetuate harmful stereotypes or biases.

Another “ugly” thing about the chatbot is that it can be used to spread misinformation or engage in malicious activities. Because the model can generate human-like text, it can be used to create convincing fake news, impersonate others online, or engage in other types of deception.

Additionally, because the model is unaware of the social context or the potential consequences of its responses, it can be used for malicious purposes. It’s essential to be aware of these limitations and to use the model responsibly to prevent it from being misused.

It’s also worth noting that GPT models like ChatGPT are imperfect; they can make mistakes and produce nonsensical or irrelevant responses.

Final Words: What Is ChatGPT? 📋

Overall though, ChatGPT appears poised to become one of the most powerful search tools available on the web today, providing users with unprecedented access to accurate information quickly and easily. It’s an exciting development for anybody who spends time researching topics online, whether for personal or professional reasons, and one that should prove highly beneficial in making our lives easier in years to come.

However, the rumours about ChatGPT replacing programmers are just that, rumours. It’s important to note that there’s no replacement for human creativity and meaningful work, and no AI is powerful enough to do so at this time. Not even ChatGPT!

Well, folks, that’s it for now. If you want more information on ChatGPT or how such a technology can be implemented to help with business growth, feel free to reach out to us for a friendly chat. We’d be happy to hear from you!

Topics
Published On

January 25, 2023