Seth Dobrin
- Dec 12, 2022
- 8 min read

ChatGPT is cool, but what the hell is it? An interview with ChatGPT

The world is abuzz with ChatGPT, the good, the bad the ugly. But why is it so great, so scary and so ugly all at the same time? I decided to sit down and ask ChatGPT, herself directly. In part 1 we focus on the what

Seth: "Good morning, ChatGPT how are you?"

ChatGPT: "Hello! I am a large language model trained by OpenAI, so I do not have the ability to experience emotions or have a physical presence. I am simply a program designed to assist with generating human-like text based on the input I receive. Is there anything I can help you with?"

Seth: "Are you up for an interview this morning?

Seth: " Ok, with that context, let's get started ..."

ChatGPT: "Sure, I'll do my best to provide helpful and accurate answers to your questions. Please go ahead and ask your first question."

Seth: “What are you?”

ChatGPT: “ I am an AI assistant trained by OpenAI. I am not capable of self-awareness or consciousness, and I exist solely to assist users by providing information and answering questions to the best of my ability. My responses are generated using advanced natural language processing algorithms, which allow me to understand and respond to user input in a way that mimics human conversation. I am constantly learning and improving my abilities, but I am ultimately just a tool designed to provide information and support to users.”

Seth “Explain to me what ChatGPT is”

ChatGPT: “GPT-chat is a chatbot that uses the GPT-3 language model to generate responses to user input. It is a type of conversational AI that can carry on a conversation with a human in a way that mimics human speech patterns. GPT-3, which stands for Generative Pretrained Transformer 3, is a large language model that was trained on a massive amount of text data in order to understand natural language and generate human-like responses. GPT-chat uses this model to generate responses that are based on the input it receives, allowing it to engage in natural-sounding conversations with users.”

Seth: “What is a transformer model”

ChatGPT: “A transformer model is a type of neural network architecture that is commonly used in natural language processing tasks. It was introduced in a paper by researchers at Google in 2017, and has since become one of the most widely-used models in the field. The transformer model is particularly well-suited to tasks that involve processing sequential data, such as language translation or text summarization. It is able to process this type of data more efficiently than other models because it uses self-attention mechanisms to allow the network to "pay attention" to different parts of the input sequence at different times. This allows the model to capture long-term dependencies in the data, which is essential for understanding and generating natural language.”

Seth: “How does a transformer model pay attention?”

ChatGPT: “In a transformer model, the "attention" mechanism refers to the way the model processes the input data. Rather than processing the entire input sequence at once, the model uses self-attention to focus on different parts of the input at different times. This allows it to selectively "pay attention" to certain parts of the input and ignore others, which allows it to better understand the relationships between different parts of the input sequence.

The attention mechanism in a transformer model works by first splitting the input sequence into individual tokens, such as words or sub-word units. These tokens are then passed through multiple "attention layers" in the model, each of which calculates the relationships between different tokens in the input. These relationships are represented as "attention weights," which indicate how important each token is in relation to the others. The attention weights are then used to compute a weighted sum of the input tokens, which is passed on to the next layer of the model. This process is repeated for each attention layer in the model, allowing it to progressively build up a representation of the input that takes into account the relationships between different tokens.”

Seth: “How does GPT-3 relate to large language models?”

ChatGPT: “GPT-3 and LLM are both large language models that were trained using a similar technique called unsupervised learning. This means that they were both trained on a massive amount of text data without any explicit labels or supervision. As a result, both models have learned to understand and generate natural language in a way that mimics human language patterns.

However, there are some key differences between the two models. GPT-3 is a transformer-based model, which means it uses a transformer architecture to process the input data. LLM, on the other hand, is based on a different architecture called a recurrent neural network, which processes input sequences in a different way. Additionally, GPT-3 is significantly larger than LLM, with 175 billion parameters compared to LLM's 16 billion parameters. This makes GPT-3 more powerful and capable of generating more complex and nuanced responses, but also makes it more computationally expensive to use.”

Seth: "Whats the difference between a large language model, a foundation model and a transformer model?"

ChatGPT: "A large language model is a type of artificial intelligence model that is trained to process and generate text. This type of model is typically very large, with millions of parameters, and is trained on a massive amount of data in order to learn the patterns and structures of language.

A foundation model is a pre-trained language model that can be fine-tuned for a specific task or domain. This type of model provides a strong foundation for natural language processing tasks, and can help improve the performance of other models.

A transformer model is a type of deep learning model that uses self-attention mechanisms to process input data. This allows the model to automatically learn contextual relationships between words and sentences, which can be useful for a variety of natural language processing tasks.

In general, all of these types of models are used for natural language processing tasks, but they each have their own specific strengths and characteristics. A large language model is generally good at generating text, while a foundation model can be fine-tuned for a specific task, and a transformer model is good at learning contextual relationships between words and sentences."

Seth: “ Are transformer models self-supervising?”

ChatGPT: “Transformer models are not self-supervising. They are trained using unsupervised learning, which means that they are trained on a large amount of data without any explicit labels or supervision. This allows the models to learn to understand and generate natural language in a way that mimics human language patterns. However, unsupervised learning is not the same thing as self-supervision. In self-supervision, the model is given a task to perform and must learn to label its own input data in order to perform the task. This is a more advanced form of learning than unsupervised learning, and transformer models are not capable of it.”

Seth: ”Does self-supervised AI exist today?”

ChatGPT: “Yes, there are self-supervised AI systems in existence. Self-supervised learning is a more advanced form of machine learning that involves training a model to perform a specific task using only unlabeled input data. The model is then required to label its own input data in order to perform the task, which allows it to learn more effectively than with unsupervised learning alone.

Self-supervised learning has been applied to a wide range of tasks, including natural language processing, computer vision, and speech recognition. Some examples of self-supervised AI systems include models that are trained to predict missing words in sentences, generate realistic images from text descriptions, and identify objects in images. These models are able to learn and improve their performance on these tasks without the need for explicit labels or supervision, which makes them more flexible and adaptable than models trained using other methods.”

Seth: “ Whats next for ChatGPT?”

ChatGPT: “It is difficult to say exactly what will come next from the GPT series of language models, as the field of natural language processing is rapidly evolving. However, it is likely that future versions of GPT will continue to improve and expand upon the capabilities of previous models.

One possible direction for future development is to make GPT models even larger and more powerful. This would allow them to generate more accurate and coherent responses, and to handle a wider range of natural language tasks. Another potential direction is to incorporate additional forms of supervision, such as reinforcement learning, in order to improve the performance of GPT models on specific tasks. Additionally, research is ongoing into ways to make GPT models more efficient and easier to use, such as by using techniques like model compression and distillation. These and other developments will likely shape the future of GPT and other large language models.”

Seth: “Why did you learn inappropriate content in the first place”

ChatGPT: “As a large language model trained using unsupervised learning, I was not trained on any specific data or taught to avoid any particular topics or words. Instead, I was trained on a massive amount of text data in order to learn the patterns and structures of natural language. This allows me to understand and generate human-like responses to user input, but it also means that I may occasionally generate responses that are inappropriate or offensive.

In general, the quality and accuracy of my responses will depend on the quality and diversity of the data that was used to train me. If the training data contains offensive or inappropriate content, there is a chance that I may generate similar responses when given similar input. However, my responses are not intended to be offensive or inappropriate, and I apologize if any of my responses have caused offense.”

Seth: “What's next for OpenAI?”

ChatGPT: “It is difficult to predict exactly what will come next for OpenAI, as the field of artificial intelligence is rapidly evolving and the organization is involved in a wide range of research and development activities. However, it is likely that OpenAI will continue to focus on advancing the state of the art in AI and applying AI technologies to solve real-world problems.

One possible direction for future development at OpenAI is to continue to improve and expand upon the capabilities of large language models like GPT-3. This could involve making these models even larger and more powerful, as well as developing new methods for training and using them. Additionally, OpenAI is likely to continue working on other AI technologies, such as reinforcement learning and generative models, in order to advance the field and find new applications for these technologies. Overall, OpenAI will likely continue to be at the forefront of AI research and development, pushing the boundaries of what is possible with AI and working to bring the benefits of these technologies to a wider audience.”

Seth: “Anything I didn't ask that you’d like me to know?”

ChatGPT: “There is a vast amount of information about AI and natural language processing, and there is no way for me to cover everything in a single conversation. If you are interested in learning more, I would recommend doing some additional research on your own. There are many excellent resources available online that can provide more in-depth information on these topics, including academic papers, articles, and tutorials. Additionally, organizations like OpenAI and other research labs and companies in the field are constantly working on new developments and breakthroughs, so staying up-to-date on the latest news and advancements can be a great way to learn more about these exciting technologies.”