100 million. This is the number of monthly unique users that ChatGPT has achieved in just one year of existence. A faster growth than, at the time, Amazon, Facebook, Whatsapp or Tiktok achieved. The numbers behind this tool have at least six figures, but its potential goes further. “The perception that society had about this technology has changed,” defends Paul Van Branteghem, physicist and founder of Spain AI – a non-profit association that was born in 2017 with the idea of democratizing AI throughout Spain.
But artificial intelligence (AI) has always been there. Netflix uses it to recommend a series or a movie, Amazon uses it to make its delivery routes more efficient, and social networks use it to show the messages that best suit your tastes. However, it has introduced a novelty: this technology is built with human language as a base and “it is also free,” explains Alberto Levy, International MBA professor at IE Business School.
Although it has a small, but important nuance: «They do not understand what you ask them, nor what they answer. They ‘only’ predict the next words based on this learned statistic,” details Richard Benjamins, head of artificial intelligence and data strategy at Telefónica.
Despite being still in its infancy since it was born on November 30, 2022, ChatGPT is capable of writing a poem, writing a formal letter or planning visits on a three-day trip to Paris. “We are seeing a completely new technology emerge that will be revolutionary,” said Satya Nadella, president and CEO of Microsoft, at the beginning of the year at the Davos Forum. A few days later, the American giant invested 10 billion dollars in this tool.
ChatGPT is just the first preview of what this technology is capable of. “It can become the main interface we have in our interaction with machines,” said France’s minister delegate for digital transition, Jean-Nöel Barrot, also in Davos. But the United States is clearer in its intelligence reports: “AI will reorganize the world.”
“Although I cannot change society on my own, artificial intelligence can influence society in significant ways, and it is the responsibility of society as a whole and decision makers to ensure that this influence is positive and beneficial for everyone,” this technology humbly responds. “The emergence of generative artificial intelligence has also generated many expectations about the future of this technology,” says the Telefónica expert.
Generative artificial intelligence can raise international GDP by 7% in the coming years, according to Goldman Sachs
And the OpenAI tool fails a lot. “You have to be especially careful,” says Levy. This new technology has been trained until 2021. “If you don’t know it, you make it up,” says the founder of Spain AI. “It’s what we call hallucinations,” he clarifies. “Although he looks just like a human, there is a long way to go before this is true,” Benjamins reveals.
Ready to see you and hear you
As if it were a baby, ChatGPT, at just one year old, already knows how to speak, but has also learned to recognize objects.
The new update to this technology “is now ready to recognize images and listen,” said Sam Altman, creator of ChatGPT. Although it is only available in the Plus and Business versions, the OpenAI tool is capable of describing what an image contains and also doing so using voice.
This new version, launched in March, is capable of better understanding the questions and offering answers more in line with user requests. “I’m not perfect yet, I don’t have answers for everything,” says the ChatGPT tool.
Legal issues
With version 4 just released, the engineers led by Sam Altman are working on update number 5 and which many experts have “asked to stop.” ChatGPT, with its new programming, has learned to speak and see, but other similar tools are capable of generating images and videos with just two words.
The fake images, videos and voice recordings generated with them are already being used to attack personalities and politicians, as well as to spread false or misleading information. Even to create fake accounts and to hijack legitimate accounts and access their contents. An example of this was the false image of the Pope wearing a white down coat.
«This technology has had a great impact on Europe’s new artificial intelligence regulation (AI Act). It has been forced to include a new category of AI in an already almost closed regulation proposal: generative AI, or foundational models, or multipurpose AI systems. All this, to ensure a responsible and ethical use of this very powerful technology,” says Benjamins.
Price rises
Artificial intelligence is trading on the rise and has unleashed an investment fever among the big millionaires of Silicon Valley and beyond.
Alphabet has seen these services as a danger to Google searches, but Microsoft has perceived them as the holy grail that will fill its coffers more. Nadella’s company invested 1 billion in 2019 and now multiplies its investment commitment by 10.
The new version of ChatGPT is capable of describing images and responding by voice to queries posed
OpenAI was founded in 2015, as a non-profit organization, with Sam Altman and Elon Musk as co-presidents. Three years later, the founder of Tesla abandoned the initiative and Altman decided to create the company in order to increase the resources for his research and, above all, the maintenance of his operations because the cost of the creature’s computing resources is around four cents. dollars (0.038 euros) for each consultation. Although its value far exceeds this cost.
OpenAI is seeking investors for a share placement in which it establishes a reference valuation of around €90 billion. “AI continues to develop due to the enormous investment it attracts,” says Benjamins.
“We must see it as an ally, not as an enemy,” Altman noted at the beginning of the year. Goldman Sachs experts point out that the emergence of this technology could raise global GDP by 7% annually over the next 10 years and will also have an impact on the labor market in around 300 million jobs. “It is going to change society,” the father of this technology has repeated on more than one occasion.
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