With ChatGPT, artificial intelligence has become a trend for everyone. Made available to the public on 30 November 2022, Open AI, the producer of this online AI, could already count over 1 million users less than 5 days later. Now, with GPT-4, a new version of the AI model has appeared - with even more amazing capabilities.

What is ChatGPT?

It is an auto-generative AI chatbot system developed by Open AI for online customer service. The system is a pre-trained generative chatbot that uses natural language processing (NLP). The source of its data is textbooks, websites and various articles (up to and including 2021), which it uses to model its own language and with which it can respond to human interactions. This chatbot system provides information and responses to human queries through AI.

After registering via chat.open.ai.com and the usual confirmation steps, you finally land on a rather ascetic-looking page and a text input field. If too many requests come in at the same time, you may have to be patient.

What can ChatGPT do?

ChatGPT can do quite a lot, you notice that very quickly. Here is a non-exhaustive overview of some of the tasks that ChatGPT can politely and kindly do for me:

1. I can have any text translated into another language of my choice (currently 26 languages).

2. I can ask the AI to write computer codes for me. If I give it a scenario, ChatGPT can write codes for it. It can even debug the code.

3. ChatGPT can write me a poem or even a whole song. This learned creativity of ChatGPT sets it apart from other chatbots.

4. ChatGPT can write an essay on any topic. It can even write me a whole research paper. I can specify the number of words. I can even give ChatGPT a text and ask the AI to rephrase, shorten or expand the text.

5. ChatGPT can create content for marketing, product descriptions, blogs, Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook posts, etc. The important thing is that the system is fed with relevant information in a decent way.

6. ChatGPT can explain any concept or topic to me at the level of complexity I want. It can explain quantum physics to me in a way that even children can understand.

7. It can solve mathematical problems or generally any academic task by giving me a detailed step-by-step explanation.

8. ChatGPT can have a conversation with me. The responses of this AI can make me forget that I am talking to a bunch of code and not a real human being!

9. ChatGPT can provide me with recipes by simply uploading a picture of my open fridge and the AI recognises what ingredients I have on hand (no kidding!).

10. Every day, many users discover new possibilities of ChatGPT, which I cannot list here. Perhaps it would make more sense to state what ChatGPT cannot do.

What ChatGPT cannot do

Like any man-made innovation, ChatGPT has its own limitations. Above all, one should always be critical, because misinformation can also flow into the communication.

1. ChatGPT can sometimes give me plausible-sounding but wrong or factually incorrect answers.

2. While some variations of a question may give me a detailed answer, other variations may cause ChatGPT to tell me that it does not know the answer. As I said, the basis is data up to the year 2021.

3. AI tools like ChatGPT lack the critical thinking skills to solve complex problems. When a user asks a multi-step question, the chatbot cannot process the nuances of the question and therefore generates inaccurate answers. In addition, ChatGPT is not able to learn on its own and adapt without human intervention.

4. ChatGPT kann keine persönlichen zugeschnittenen Empfehlungen geben. ChatGPT hat keinen Zugang zu allen persönlichen Informationen, die ein menschlicher Nutzer zur Verfügung stellen kann, und kann daher nicht dasselbe Maß an Einsicht und Empathie bieten.

Conclusion

In summary, ChatGPT offers impressive possibilities when it comes to human-computer interaction - it can open up new avenues and significantly increase a company's productivity. However, it is equally important not to forget that ChatGPT has its limitations. Recognising these shortcomings can help to use the speech processing tool effectively in the right areas.

Also, the language model cannot replace intuition or human creativity. ChatGPT generates answers based on data patterns, but it cannot think outside the box, which is essential for innovation, creative thinking and problem solving.