View | One year of ChatGPT: The Hits, the misses, and the future

On 30 November, 2022, OpenAI launched its artificial intelligence (A() chatbot, a Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) based on the Large Language Model (LLM), named ChatGPT. The bot was capable of generating responses to questions and prompts posted by humans. Soon after its launch, the chatbot became a topic of much fanfare and discussion. The attention helped it reach one million users within five days and 100 million in just a couple of months.

From solving mathematical problems to writing complex codes, people gave the AI tool varied prompts encompassing several domains. Much to their astonishment, ChatGPT was able to solve the prompts within minutes, generating near-accurate responses. Moreover, the bot has been writing stories, and essays and even helping users with their to-do lists.

According to a report published by the National Library of Medicine, the generative AI tool has over 175 billion parameters for processing a given prompt and generating a response, providing it an edge in terms of reliability over a plethora of other generative AI tools that have been launched in the market before and since its release.

In its first year, ChatGPT has catalysed transformative changes across various domains, leaving an indelible mark on how we interact with technology. Human-machine interactions have evolved as ChatGPT has set new benchmarks in natural language understanding and generation. The model has become an integral part of diverse applications, from customer support chatbots to content creation tools.

Such has been the disruption caused by ChatGPT that leading tech giants like Alphabet Inc and Meta Inc, after having initially lost advertisers due to traffic moving to the chatbot, announced their own AI chatbots to counter ChatGPT. While Alphabet’s search engine Google has already been integrated with its homegrown Bard, Meta has announced Meta AI which is set to be available on its popular networking platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. However, as of now, ChatGPT continues to be more popular than other tools by virtue of having the first-mover advantage.

When it comes to its disruption beyond the tech industry, education, and content creation saw a paradigm shift as ChatGPT contributed to personalised learning experiences and assisted students in their academic pursuits. The model became a valuable resource for information retrieval and problem-solving, enhancing the way people access and process knowledge. Educators and educational institutions across the world are now considering the integration of ChatGPT into their learning processes as well as academic research.

In healthcare, ChatGPT has played a crucial role in facilitating communication between medical professionals and patients, streamlining information exchange, and improving the overall patient experience. Its ability to comprehend and generate human-like text has elevated the quality of interactions in critical scenarios. Medical report generation and health advice are now at their fingertips — all thanks to ChatGPT.

Meanwhile, its ability to generate human-like responses has had far-reaching implications across sectors, with people using it to generate formal communication of a repetitive nature. The tool is also being integrated with customer assistance and customer care services across businesses.

However, the chatbot has also generated ethical concerns among academicians and authors alike. Both communities have expressed scepticism regarding its misuse and the possibility of plagiarism of their original work. Students are said to have already started using ChatGPT to complete their assignments, prompting some schools and universities to strictly ban its use for academic purposes. Others have integrated it into their curricula with strict riders on how to use it ethically. Mainly, its ability to provide human-like responses makes it difficult for educators to distinguish between what is written, and which is AI-generated.

ChatGPT, despite its limitations, has certainly shown promise over the past year. The tool has forced the tech world to look at AI and natural language processing tools from a different perspective. The success of ChatGPT has fuelled the advancement of more frequent human-machine interactions and collaborations.