Everybody's talking about the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT; when it's the topic du jour on Last Week Tonight With John Oliver and South Park within a week of each other, you know something's bubbling up.
In a nutshell, it's a chatbot that can respond to simple text commands to do things like compose emails, write stories or scripts, write responses to text messages, and do a whole lot of other things using AI to figure out what it is you're looking for it to do.
Related: A Thorough Examination of Every Time ‘Black Mirror’ Predicted the Future
If that's not scary enough, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, this week unveiled a new version of the tool called GPT-4. The company said the new version would score in the top 10% if it took the bar exam to become a lawyer. On its website, OpenAI said that while GPT-4 is "less capable than humans in many real-world scenarios, (it) exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks."
CNN posted a short list of "jaw-dropping" things the new version can do that the previous one couldn't. The biggest might be that it can use photos as input data as well as text. So instead of just asking it to do something for you in plain language, you could also upload an image or drawing to give it a better idea. That feature will go live soon, and it's already been tested to do things like create a recipe from a picture of the inside of a refrigerator or create a website based on a drawing.
Other new features include the ability to help people do coding to do things like, say, create video games. GPT-4 is better at passing exams like LSATs, GREs, and SATs. When giving responses to questions or doing analysis, GPT-4 can do more detailed work, outputting up to 25,000 words, instead of the previous limit of about 4,000. And in a boon to lawyers and med students, GPT-4 can do things like "one-click lawsuits"—generating all the legal paperwork to file a lawsuit—or do remote medical diagnosis.
A viral tweet from earlier this week documented one man’s use of Chat GPT-4 to launch a business using $100. Thanks to the AI’s guidance, the business has already earned more than 70 times its initial investment, grown to several thousand followers on multiple social media platforms, and is set to employ personnel. [Insert mind-blown emoji].
Experts are cautioning not to assume that what GPT-4 can do will be perfect or without errors; it's still a work in progress, constantly learning and evolving. So make sure you read through the output before you sue someone or try to get your medical degree using ChatGPT. But whatever you do, strike while the bot is hot—or get left behind.
More From LEVEL: