ChatGPT Explained: Complete A-Z Guide || Will It Kill Jobs?

The field of Artificial Intelligence is constantly evolving as new developments are happening all the time. One of the latest and most revolutionary advancements is the launch of ChatGPT. With millions of people raving about this AI Chatbot, ChatGPT has become the talk of the town!

In this article on ChatGPT Explained, we will understand what ChatGPT is, how it works, and explore all of its exceptional capabilities. We’ll also discuss its potential applications in various fields, its pros and cons, and some important FAQs that most users have.

So, is ChatGPT worth the massive hype? Is it the tech breakthrough that everyone was waiting for? Can it replace Google? Prepare to get answers to all your questions in this article. Let’s dive right in!

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an NLP (Natural Language Processing) model developed by Open AI Research Labs, founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Built on the latest language prediction model variant (GPT 3.5), ChatGPT is an advanced chatbot with conversational capabilities.

OpenAI ChatGPT

This means it can interact with users and have human-like conversations. Along with that, it can also remember previously stated information and respond accordingly. It has been trained on massive amounts of data, which makes it one of the most powerful language-learning models to exist.

It was launched on November 30th, 2022 and was made available for Beta testing on December 1st, 2022. Interestingly, ChatGPT crossed over 1 million sign-ups within 5 days of its launch, making it a viral sensation in the digital world.

How does ChatGPT Work?

ChatGPT is based on the latest version of the GPT (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) series called GPT 3.5.

Prior to this version, OpenAI had developed GPT-3. It was a language model trained on 175 billion parameters and could generate human-like text by supplying a prompt. It was widely used in AI writing and SEO tools like Rytr, Writesonic, WordHero, NeuronWriter, etc.

ChatGPT is a fine-tuned version of GPT 3.5. Along with 175 billion parameters, it is also trained on a massive amount of code and human conversational data. This is the major reason behind its conversational abilities and coding skills.

Apart from this, it is also trained using a special technique called Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF).

OpenAI RLHF Model

In this technique, ChatGPT is exposed to conversations where the human AI trainers play the role of both the chatbot and the human. This is the reason the responses generated by ChatGPT sound very natural and human-like.

The ideal use cases for ChatGPT include customer service, content creation, coding, creative ideas generation, data analysis, etc.

What makes ChatGPT different from other chatbots?

There is a range of AI assistants and chatbots flooding the Internet world. Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri are the most popular examples. But how is ChatGPT different from them?

ChatGPT Conversation

Well, one thing that makes it stand out from the rest of the artificial intelligence chatbots is its ability to carry full-fledged conversations with the users.

It can not only analyze your responses but also remember your previous responses and responds intelligently. And the best part is that it uses a natural and everyday language to converse with the users, which gives it a more human-like and real feel.

GPT3 vs ChatGPT

Wondering how GPT3 and ChatGPT are different as an AI technology? The table below explains the major differences between the two.

GPT-3ChatGPT
Training Parameters175 billion175 BillionRLHF TechniqueHuman conversational text
Designed ForNLP TasksChatbot apps
Content Retention AbilityNoYes
Use CasesCreative Writing, Business Writing, Ads, Translation, Summarization, Data AnalysisCustomer Service, Data Analysis, Blogging, Copywriting, Coding, Debugging, etc.

How to Access ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is currently in its Beta stage and is open for anyone to use free of cost. In order to access ChatGPT, you simply need to follow the steps mentioned below.

Step 1: Sign Up

Head over to the OpenAI ChatGPT Official Website and click on the sign-up button.

Signing Up on OpenAI ChatGPT

Step 2: Enter Credentials

Enter your email id and password to register on OpenAI. 

Entering credentials on OpenAI ChatGPT

Alternatively, you can also use your Google or Microsoft account to sign up.

Step 3: Verify Account

Next, you’ll receive a verification link on your Gmail account. Once you click on the link, you can then log in to ChatGPT and start exploring different use cases.

OpenAI ChatGPT Account verification

OpenAI grants every user with a free credit of $18 in their account, which will remain active for a duration of 3 months. If you need more credits, you can browse through their language and image models to choose an appropriate plan.

Unlike the standard monthly or annual subscriptions, they have a pay-as-you-go pricing model, which is fantastic.

Is ChatGPT free?

As of now, ChatGPT is completely free to be used by anyone. Currently, it’s in the Beta stage, which is why they are inviting users to test it out. All you need to do is sign up through your email id on the OpenAI website.

With Beta testing, they’ll be able to analyze the imperfections in ChatGPT and get constructive feedback on this new tech. Once they analyze and implement the improvements on ChatGPT, it most likely will stop being free and will be available as a paid service.

Therefore, ChatGPT is free for a limited time only.

ChatGPT Plus Vs ChatGPT Free

OpenAI has finally announced a paid version for ChatGPT called as ChatGPT Plus. This version can be availed for a subscription fee of $20/month. Though the free plan would remain active for all users, ChatGPT Plus would provide various advantages over the free version.

ChatGPT Plus

For instance, you will be able to enjoy a swift response time and access ChatGPT services even during peak traffic hours. Apart from that, you’ll also get a priority access to all the latest features and updates on ChatGPT.

As of now, ChatGPT Plus is only available for users in the United States. But they are slowly extending to access to more regions. I’m really excited for this feature to roll out in India soon! 

Things You Can Do with ChatGPT

Whether you’re a newbie or a professional, there are a range of functions you can perform with ChatGPT. Let’s look at the most important ones below.

Programming

ChatGPT can help you write entire programs in any language of your choice. For instance, here’s the result when I asked it to write a program for a ‘Countdown timer app in Python language’.

ChatGPT Programming

It generated the entire code merely in seconds along with a detailed explanation of how it functions.

If you’re facing problems with your own programs, ChatGPT can debug them for you. Along with that, it can also offer detailed explanations regarding the errors spotted in your code and how you can fix them.

Academics

ChatGPT can bring major development in academics as well. School and college students can get help with writing their assignments, homeworks, projects, research papers, etc.

For instance, these are the responses produced by ChatGPT when I asked it to write an academic essay on ‘Women Empowerment’.

ChatGPT for Academics

Overall, it can really help you save up a lot of your time!

Copywriting

You’ll also find ChatGPT being extensively used in copywriting. It can help you draft emails, advertisements, product descriptions, landing page copy, etc.

For example, here’s a landing page copy it generated for ‘A business summit for solo entrepreneurs trying to grow their business.’

ChatGPT Copywriting

Overall, the refined and eloquent outputs produced by ChatGPT with minimal inputs really impress me.

Conversations

ChatGPT can respond to your questions in a very natural and human-like manner. It can even remember your previous responses, ask follow-up questions, and carry out in-depth conversations with users.

ChatGPT Conversations

Therefore, it finds perfect use as AI assistants, customer service, etc.

Creative Ideas

If you’re struggling to find creative ideas or inspiration for your projects, ChatGPT can help. You can look up gift ideas, business ideas, product name ideas, and more.

For instance, here are the results that ChatGPT produced when I asked it to suggest “Christmas gift ideas for my mentor”.

ChatGPT Creative Ideas

It can even help you write fictional content like poems, story plots, song lyrics, social media captions in various tones, recipes, letters, etc.

If you’re interested in learning how to use ChatGPT and access different use cases of AI-generated content, you can check out my ChatGPT Tutorial. I hope it’ll help you understand how to work with this new technology.

ChatGPT for Blogging

If you are a blogger or a content creator, you’ll be happy to know that ChatGPT can be used for blogging.

It can offer creative blog ideas, create outlines for your blogs, and even generate content under every subheading. It can also correct your grammatical errors.

For instance, the following are the results when I asked ChatGPT to create an outline for my blog titled “Tips for Effective Business Communication”.

ChatGPT Blogging

I liked the way it can generate in-depth content on any topic of your choice. Overall, it’s a quick and effective way to generate long-form content.

How accurate is Chat GPT?

To test the accuracy of ChatGPT, I tested it with a mathematical riddle about rats. Take a look at it below. 

ChatGPT Logical Accuracy

In this question, a human could’ve easily pointed out that an ‘hour and a half’ and ‘ninety minutes’ are the same thing. But ChatGPT failed to grasp that logic. Therefore, we can conclude that ChatGPT lacks logical accuracy at times. 

A big problem that arises with ChatGPT is that of copyright violation. It is trained on an extensive amount of data. So, when a user commands ChatGPT to generate output for a query, it may scrape the Internet or use some free websites to generate the response.

However, it’s possible that ChatGPT might not have permission to use that data, resulting in a copyright violation. You can also try running the content generated by ChatGPT through some plagiarism-checking tools to ensure it’s free from any copied content.

Similarly, OpenAI’s Dall-E 2 is an AI model for generating digital images through text-based prompts and descriptions. There are a lot of online apps using the Dall-E 2 model. One popular example is the Lensa app by Prisma Labs.

I recently generated AI art of myself through the Lensa app and the results were jaw-dropping! You’ll be amazed too!

I simply uploaded an image of my face, and it generated all the images automatically. I don’t think an illustrator could’ve done them as well as the AI did. I was completely blown by looking at the results. AI art and illustrations can be used as game avatars or comic characters.

However, AI art has been facing a lot of backlashes among the artists’ community. Here’s why. AI models like Dall-E 2 are trained on millions of captioned images from the Internet. 

Thus, the digital images generated by it may reference an artist’s artwork and pick their color combinations, style, design, etc, to generate new AI images. For this reason, AI image generator apps like Lensa have been criticized.

Can ChatGPT Replace Google?

Considering the potential of ChatGPT, most people are wondering if it can be a replacement for Google.

ChatGPT vs Google

This is a valid question because Google doesn’t have its own data. To get the information you need, you have to visit other websites. It also serves you with intrusive ads and sponsored posts. 

ChatGPT comes as an interesting alternative with its own data and a clean and ad-free UI. But in my opinion, it still cannot replace Google as of now. The following are the reasons.

Requires High Computational Power

Whenever a user requests a query, it requires some computational power to execute it. The computation cost per query is lower for Google as compared to ChatGPT. Thus, ChatGPT is a much more expensive option at the moment and cannot be used on a mass scale.

Doesn’t Serve Ads

ChatGPT doesn’t serve any ads, affiliate links, sponsored content, etc to its users. Thus, it currently has no way of recovering the computation cost. However, it won’t be available as a free service for a long time. You’ll have to purchase it probably on a paid subscription in the future.

Lower Accuracy

As of now, Google results are more reliable and accurate. Even though results generated by ChatGPT are highly refined and detailed, it might have some factual and logical errors at times.

Doesn’t Show Latest Data

If you want access to the latest data, including news, current affairs, and updates, ChatGPT cannot help. The latest data is indexed on Google. Whereas ChatGPT can only generate text based on its training data, which is limited till 2021.

Overall, both ChatGPT and Google have their own use cases. Where Google can access the latest news and accurate data, ChatGPT can be used for data analysis, content generation, coding, conversations, etc.

Both of them can be used together to enhance the power of your research and content generation. But currently, it’s not possible to replace one with the other.

Advantages of ChatGPT

Conversational Abilities

ChatGPT is trained on an extensive amount of conversational text. Thus, it’s able to understand and respond to users in a human-like and natural language. Thus, it could be used as a powerful chatbot.

Solving Complex Problems

ChatGPT can solve complex problems, question answers, etc, from a wide range of fields and subjects. ChatGPT can prove to be a helping hand for students while completing their homeworks, assignments, research projects, etc.

Retaining Previous Information

Along with conversational abilities, ChatGPT can also retain previous information stated by the user and respond accordingly. This ability makes it a great fit for being used as a personal assistant, in customer service, etc.

Coding and Debugging

It can not only write code in any language of your choice but also find errors in your code. Along with that, it also offers simple explanations of the code generated and corrections made. Therefore, ChatGPT can prove to be a gift to programmers and developers.

Content Generation

ChatGPT is based on the most advanced language prediction model. Thus, it can generate a vast amount of creative and professional text content. This makes it fit to be used by bloggers, content creators, copywriters, etc.

Drawbacks of ChatGPT

Incorrect Answers at Times

A major problem with ChatGPT is that sometimes it generates articulate answers that appear believable but are actually meaningless or illogical.

Sensitive to Input Phrasing

It may display the correct results for a certain query, but if you tweak your input and phrase it differently, the results may change completely.

Limited Access to Data

ChatGPT doesn’t have access to the latest data or information. Therefore, it doesn’t have accurate results for a lot of queries. 

For instance, when asked for an iPhone 13 vs iPhone 14 Review, it didn’t produce any significant results.

ChatGPT Lack of Latest Data

 

Can be Used for Non-Ethical Purposes

ChatGPT can be used to create malware that can infect devices. Students can even get their entire school homework and assignments done with it. 

Some users have also used ChatGPT to search for harmful instructions, like the process of creating a bomb. Thus, this new technology is vulnerable to being used for non-ethical reasons.

Will ChatGPT Kill Jobs?

The potential of ChatGPT cannot be underestimated. It is so powerful that it may perform the tasks of 5 employees together! A good example is AI writing tools. If you’re a content writer, you may write 1 blog post a day. Whereas AI may churn out dozens of blogs posts a day!

GPT3-based writing assistants are already taking over the Internet. With their skills, an average content writer probably won’t stand a chance. Thus, in my opinion, it will certainly affect entry-level jobs in the next 2 years.

Skill Diversification

If you want to stay on top of AI, you need to diversify your skills. For instance, content writers can diversify their skills by learning SEO, graphic design, copywriting, marketing, etc.

Therefore, if you have a whole package of skills, it’d be difficult to replace. In the current times, it’s essential to keep sharpening industry-relevant skills to gain an edge over AI.

Conclusion

ChatGPT is definitely a disruptive technology that has the potential to revolutionize the digital world. Slowly, as it gets more fine-tuned, it’ll be used as an API and more advanced apps will be developed upon it.

It’ll be used in different industries like programming, healthcare, technology, etc, to revolutionize the way they function. In my opinion, we’ll get to see some interesting developments in the next two years. I’m really excited to explore the potential of ChatGPT.

Anyway, that was it for this article. Have you checked out ChatGPT yet? If not, you can register for a free account and test out its use cases. Let me know your experiences with it in the comments section below.

This is Kripesh signing off. Take care and keep learning. 🙂

FAQs

How can ChatGPT be used?

ChatGPT can be used in a variety of ways. Its most popular use cases might be customer service, content creation, coding, creative ideas generation, data analysis, etc.

What are examples of how people are using ChatGPT?

People usually use ChatGPT to have conversations with the AI, generate and debug code in different languages, brainstorm creative ideas, write long-form content, etc.

Is ChatGPT a good or bad thing?

It entirely depends on what we use it for. ChatGPT can write code, and content, and have intelligent conversations. But it can also perform destructive activities like designing malware, etc.

Do you have to pay to use ChatGPT?

At the moment, ChatGPT is free and can be accessed by signing up on the OpenAI ChatGPT official website.
But it’s in the Beta stage as of now. Once they collect sufficient feedback from the users and make improvements to the ChatGPT technology, they’ll definitely end its free access and switch to a paid subscription model.

Will ChatGPT replace programmers?

ChatGPT can write code in any language and even debug your code. This can be helpful for programmers to write codes quickly. But it’s still too early to say if ChatGPT will replace programmers.

Will ChatGPT help students cheat better?

Yes, ChatGPT can answer all kinds of questions from a variety of subjects. Thus, students could get their assignments and homework completed within a few minutes, which is not an ethical practice.

Should we be scared of ChatGPT?

The only scary thing about ChatGPT is that it can “think” like us. It can write and fix bugs in your code and have conversations just like humans! It also has the potential to improve its cognitive abilities with time, which scares most people.

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Kripesh Adwani

Kripesh Adwani is a digital tool expert who buys, tests, and reviews SAAS tools for small businesses. Based on 10+ years of experience in tech he provides insightful reviews. His content is widely consumed, serving millions of users each month. Kripesh has also been featured in more than 50 publications, including The Economic Times, The Free Press Journal & Cloudways.

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