Category: Computing

ChatGPT – What to make of it

It can write essays, explain more or less anything you might ask, it can even pass many written exams on all kinds of topics

If you’ve been paying attention to the technology scene recently, you cannot fail to have heard of ChatGPT. What is it? Quite simply it’s a chatbot, a type and read interface for version 3.5 of the GPT engine developed by Open AI.

If all that sounds confusing, a chatbot is artificial intelligence (AI) software, in this case presented as a webpage, where you can have a conversation with a computer program. You type in a question and the chatbot sends a reply. Repeated questions and replies form a conversation, in ChatGPT’s case a remarkably smooth, almost ‘human’ experience.

A machine thinking? – From Wikimedia

If you haven’t yet tried it, then you really should. It’s free and very easy to use. I encourage you to visit chat.openai.com, sign up for a free account, and type a question. There are no rules about what you can and cannot type; ChatGPT is accomplished at understanding ordinary language and gives good, conversational replies.

Assuming you tried it out and have found your way back to my blog post, I’d like to explain a bit more about it. ChatGPT was released as a website at the end of November in 2022 and has grown in popularity very, very fast. If you tried it out for yourself, I’m sure you will understand why. It’s compelling, it can write essays, explain more or less anything you might ask, it can even pass many written exams on all kinds of topics. And version 4.0 of the engine is already available as a paid option and is far more capable. It can take images as input as well as text and has, for example, built a working website based on a sketch and a description of what the website should do. That is little short of astounding!

The company, Open AI, was created to work on artificial intelligence with safety very much in mind. Sometimes, ChatGPT generates false answers; that can be an issue but it is not deliberate. What if more advanced AI became able to reason as people do, what if it started to think and develop it’s own goals, and what if its intellect became faster and more nimble than our own? Could we prevent it from taking over? Would it be benign, or might it become hostile? Would we be able to control it? These are serious issues. We need to think these things through now, before it becomes too late.

I don’t want to be alarmist, and AI as we currently experience it is far from becoming a threat. It may prove useful in many ways and we’ll see that begin to happen very soon. But we’ll need to manage it in ways that prevent it helping people do bad things. We don’t want such technology to enhance criminal activity, for example. So there’s a great deal to consider right now, and the need for that will only increase as AI systems become more and more capable. For more on this I recommend Sean Carroll’s podcast episode 230, linked below.

I’m going to close this blog post at this point, but I’ll be back soon with a sort of interview with ChatGPT. I’ll ask some questions, let the software answer, and publish the conversation.

Meanwhile, have some ChatGPT conversations for yourself and see what you think.

See also:

Evolution and behaviour

A computer program that simulates coding and inheritance on the one hand, and neural function on the other, permits the emulation of simple animal-like organisms

Today I want to share two striking YouTube videos that I found recently. Maybe you’d like to watch them yourself.

Part of a DNA molecule (from Wikipedia)

Introduction – The animation shows the molecular structure of DNA, rotating so you can visualise it more easily. Watson and Crick famously published this structure in April 1953.

DNA contains the genetic information that specifies the nature of plants, animals and other life forms. Each species has it’s own form of this DNA ‘instruction book’. Amongst other things, a species’ DNA controls the basic structure of the brain just as it does for other body parts. But here’s an interesting fact: The coding and behaviour of DNA can be simulated by strings of characters stored in a computer.

Brains involve cells called neurons with connections between them, and neural networks running on a computer can behave in a similar way to a very simple brain. Building a computer program that simulates coding and inheritance on the one hand, and neural function on the other, permits the emulation of simple animal-like organisms, and there are applications out there that do just this.

First example – One such program is Minute Labs’ Evolution Simulator (check out their YouTube to see it in action).

Second example – Another program, and I want to focus mainly on this one, is from David Randall Miller. He wrote a particularly fascinating simulator, see his YouTube demo and explanation below for some quite deep insights. It’s a long video, but breaks into logical chunks for easier viewing; I suggest viewing the first section and continuing if it seems interesting.

It’s a really helpful approach for anyone wanting to better understand evolution. It assumes only fundamental levels of the topics, but will enhance your appreciation of maths and computing while also demonstrating the basics of genetics, inheritance, simple neural networks, and animal behaviour. That’s quite a lot of benefit from just one video!

Some questions to ask yourself…

  • What new understandings did you gain?
  • Did you disagree with anything?
    • If so, why?
  • What conclusions did you draw about the nature of living things?
  • Was anything surprising to you?
  • What questions do the videos cause you to ask?

Another way – write.as

The focus moves from advertising, costly payments and central control to an absence of these things

There’s more than one way of doing most things, and write.as is an alternative way of writing stuff online. Whether you want to create a blog, a story, or just private notes, write.as is well worth a look.

It’s part of a long standing move by some web users away from the commercial world of Google, Facebook, Twitter and so on, towards a very different model of which Wikipedia is the best known example. The focus moves from advertising, costly payments and central control to an absence of these things.

If you like freedom, privacy and simplicity, you’ll find all three at write.as . I suggest you take a quick look around, you can begin with a simple page I put together in less than five minutes – write.as/chrisjj