ChatGPT, or even spelled Chat GPT, some would say is simply an AI-based chatbot, others a nightmare or dream come true. The reason lies in the fact that on the surface it seems to be conversing with Hal 9000 from 2001 A Space Odyssey hybridised with Joshua from War Games. Although it was only released on 30 November 2022, many are convinced that it really is one of the most mind-blowing artificial intelligence; anything but yet another smartphone or TV set with an extra useless feature.

ChatGPT stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, a combination of terms that tickles the ego of developers but hints at very little. On the other hand, it is still a prototype developed by OpenAI, the non-profit research organisation on artificial intelligence that promotes the development of so-called friendly Ai (Fai) – intelligences capable of contributing to the good of humanity, but with an evolution mechanism subject to precise checks and balances, as theorised by researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky. For the record, the founders of OpenAI include Elon Musk, but he has not been on the board for some time.

Well, ChatGPT as a chatbot expresses itself normally with text and is able to provide a level of conversation on a par with a human, indeed an omniscient intellectual end; so much so that universities in several countries, including the United States and Australia, have already banned its use for term papers or academic studies.

Its secret lies in a sophisticated machine learning model, hence a first-class machine learning capability. Of course, its excellent performance is also due to the work of several human instructors who contributed to the development of so-called supervised learning and reinforcement learning. As if that were not enough, the training environment was organised on Microsoft’s Azure cloud.

The only consolation is that it struggles in mathematics: even with the most elementary algebra it struggles. And it is wonderfully human a machine that shines in complex aspects and slips on the basics of its genetics.