By Heather Noggle,
UniteNews Contributing Writer
Chat GPT’s been dominating the news for almost a year. AI this, AI that. Just what even IS AI?
AI stands for artificial intelligence, and computer gurus have been searching for it to be implemented since I was in junior high school eating Peanut M&Ms in the Meyer Library and peering through books on the topic.
We’re finally – kinda – there. We’re not yet at the Kitt of Knight Rider level – from the same era – but we’re on our way.
Generative AI is mostly what we’re playing with.
“Make some text for me, ChatGPT.” “How about an image, DALL-E 3, based on a prompt I provide of what I want?” (DALL-E 3 is a free plugin that you can use with ChatGPT you pay for). $20 a month.
ChatGPT’s addition of DALL-E 3 pushed me into “okay, I’ll pay for that; sign me up.” So for the last month, DALL-E 3 and I have created a lot of cat art and swirly art. For someone who can’t draw a straight stick figure, this is fascinating.
ChatGPT stands for Chat + Generative Pre-Trained Transformers. It’s really good at predicting the next word, and with that capability, it can write paragraphs in front of you as you read and watch. You can even ask it to help you prompt it so that you get the output that you’re seeking.
What all can it do? Categorize things you provide to it by determining what groups of information have in common. It can also make recipes from your pantry staples.
But. Please be careful with what data you give it. Keep people’s identifying information out of ChatGPT and other programs like it – Google’s Bard and Claude.
Here’s a list of things to consider when using Generative AI – ChatGPT or one of the others.
- Don’t provide private data. It can use your private data to train its models and even, sometimes, serve that private data up within search engine results. Also, OpenAI – ChatGPT’s parent company, experienced a data breach in March of 2023, so data in some accounts was taken, though they believe that was only payment data. (Only)
- Double-check all results AI gives you. It sometimes is overly creative and lies or embellishes.
- Use Google or another search engine for searching. Use AI to make something you already do work faster. Brainstorm ideas, or ask it for suggestions of related ideas when you provide it a list.
Also, be on the lookout for Microsoft Copilot to become more widely available. It just launched for large companies and will be integrated into Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. You can include your data there, segregated from the general Internet and not used to train the artificial intelligence model.
Want a preview of Microsoft’s program? You can visit Bing Chat Enterprise in the Microsoft Edge browser. That’s currently in preview mode at bing.com/chat.
Explore, but keep your data secure. AI is best used as a robotic arm – to make something faster – not a replacement for human thinking.
