ChatGPT Chatbot Excites Users, Investors
- By Matt Jones
- Jan 18, 2023
A new chatbot called ChatGPT from artificial intelligence research lab OpenAI has gone viral. The bot mimics human communication, and it’s been used to generate content on a wide range of topics—from small talk to academic essays to news stories and more. Business Insider reports that the tool was released in November 2022 and gained more than 100 million users within a little over a week. As a form of “large language model tools” technology, isn’t technically sentient and doesn’t think for itself.
“There’s a saying that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually give you Shakespeare,” said Emory University law professor Matthew Sag. “There’s a large number of monkeys here, giving you things that are impressive. But, there is intrinsically a difference between the way that humans produce language, and the way that large language models do it.”
According to OpenAI, users begin the conversation with the chatbot by entering a prompt. From there, ChatGPT can “answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.” Prompts can include anything from submitting code and asking why it’s not working, to writing poetry, planning parties, and asking it to act as a stand-up comedian, according to Ars Technica.
From a security perspective, some users are taking advantage of ChatGPT to write emails and software for use in ransomware, malicious spam, espionage, and more. Amateur coders are submitting just enough data and prompting to get the bot to create functional malware. “It’s still too early to decide whether or not ChatGPT capabilities will become the new favorite tool for participants in the Dark Web,” according to company researchers as reported by Ars Technica. “However, the cybercriminal community has already shown significant interest and are jumping into this latest trend to generate malicious code.”