ChatGPT is impressive, but not without faults. Launched by OpenAI in late 2022, it amazed users with its ability to answer almost any question uniquely.
Unlike traditional search engines, ChatGPT provides synthesized, direct answers rather than links to various sources. It's like a calculator for the vast knowledge found online.
There are different tiers of ChatGPT. The free version, 3.5, uses 175 billion parameters to understand and generate nuanced responses. While substantial, it’s less powerful than ChatGPT 4.0, which has 1 trillion parameters and comes at a cost. This review focuses on the free version.
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What is ChatGPT-3.5?
ChatGPT-3.5 is an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched in November 2022. It is designed to engage in conversations, answer questions, and help with various tasks. ChatGPT-3.5 is available for anyone who makes an account with OpenAI. It is detailed and articulate across a wide range of topics. However, the 3.5 version has also been criticized for its sometimes uneven accuracy.
How does ChatGPT-3.5 work?
ChatGPT-3.5 works by being fine-tuned from GPT-3.5, a language model trained to produce text. It was optimized specifically for dialogue using a method called Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF). This technique involves using human demonstrations and preference comparisons to guide the model toward generating responses that align more closely with what is considered desirable or useful in conversational contexts.
How to Use ChatGPT-3.5?
Here's how to get started with ChatGPT-3.5 in 6 simple steps. This guide will help you create a free account on the OpenAI website and log in for the first time, using browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, or any other desktop or mobile browser.
Step 1: Visit chat.openai.com to access the Chat GPT login page. Click on the “Sign up” button to begin the process.
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Step 2: Complete the registration form with your email address and password. Alternatively, you can sign up using your Google or Microsoft account.
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Step 3: Verify your email address. Check your inbox for a verification email and follow the instructions.
Step 4: Once your account is verified, provide any required additional details.
Step 5: Enter a valid mobile number and submit the code that you will receive via text message to confirm your identity.
Step 6: Voila! You now have access to ChatGPT-3.5. Please note, the free version of ChatGPT-3.5 may experience slow response times and occasional logouts due to high demand.
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For those who want a more seamless experience, the next section covers upgrading to the premium version of ChatGPT-3.5.
ChatGPT 3.5 vs. ChatGPT 4 Comparison
ChatGPT-3.5 brought considerable excitement with its abilities to generate text akin to human writing, produce code, and solve mathematical problems. However, ChatGPT-4's capabilities surpass those of its predecessor dramatically. A Microsoft research team has even described it as an “early (yet still incomplete) version of an artificial general intelligence (AGI) system,” highlighting its potential in diverse fields such as mathematics, coding, vision, medicine, law, and psychology.
Performance Metrics
Academic Achievement: According to OpenAI, ChatGPT-3.5 achieved a score on the Uniform Bar Exam placing it in the 10th percentile among aspiring lawyers, whereas ChatGPT-4's performance placed it in the 90th percentile. In the Biology Olympiad, GPT-3.5 ranked in the 31st percentile, significantly lower than GPT-4, which scored in the 99th percentile.
Technical Upgrades: GPT-4 offers enhanced functionality, memory, and accuracy, making it safer and more reliable.
Key Upgrades from ChatGPT-3.5 to ChatGPT-4
Multimodality: GPT-4 introduces multimodal capabilities, responding not just to text but also to visual and audio inputs. For example, users can input an image of their refrigerator's contents, and ChatGPT-4 could suggest recipes, or they could use voice commands, and the AI would respond vocally. This capability extends to functions like video captioning or translation.
Safety and Accuracy: GPT-4 is 82% less likely to respond to disallowed content requests and 40% more likely to provide factual responses than GPT-3.5, based on OpenAI’s internal evaluations. These improvements come from user feedback, expert consultations, and real-world applications, addressing past controversies around misinformation and bias.
Memory Enhancements: GPT-4's short-term memory capacity is significantly expanded to 64,000 words, compared to the 8,000-word limit of GPT-3.5. This larger context window allows it to process up to 25,000 words at a time, and with the Turbo version, even up to 128,000 words, enabling more complex and extensive interactions.
These advancements make ChatGPT-4 a more powerful and versatile tool, enhancing its utility across a broader spectrum of tasks and applications.
ChatGPT-3.5 Pricing and Features
ChatGPT-3.5 is freely accessible to the general public. However, accessing GPT-4 requires a subscription to ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20 per month. This subscription not only allows you to use the more advanced GPT-4 but also provides access to several enhanced features:
Plugins: These tools enable ChatGPT to interface with other applications, broadening its utility. For instance, plugins from companies like Expedia, Kayak, and OpenTable allow ChatGPT to assist with travel bookings.
DALL-E: A part of the ChatGPT interface, DALL-E is a generative AI capable of creating unique images from textual prompts. It utilizes the same understanding of natural language to generate images of both real and imagined objects in various styles or descriptions.
Personalized GPTs: Available exclusively to Plus subscribers, these are tailored chatbots created with GPT technology to meet specific needs. For example, you could develop a GPT to assist with studying for a class by inputting your notes and course materials, making it a personalized study aid.
What Drawbacks Does ChatGPT-3.5 Have?
ChatGPT-3.5 has garnered attention for its ability to handle various tasks, such as answering questions, composing music and poetry, translating languages, generating computer code, and interacting in a human-like manner. Despite these capabilities, several critical limitations hinder its performance and accuracy:
Lack of Contextual Understanding: ChatGPT-3.5 struggles with understanding the subtle nuances of human language, including jokes and sarcasm. This is because it doesn't think like humans and lacks the imagination to fully grasp the meaning behind indirect expressions.
Issues with Long Text Generation: While trained to produce longer responses, ChatGPT-3.5 often repeats the same information when asked for detailed answers, resulting in verbose but vague and sometimes inaccurate content. Its shorter responses tend to be more accurate and informative.
Inability to Multitask: The model performs best when handling a single task. Attempting to use it for multiple tasks simultaneously can lead to reduced accuracy and effectiveness, as it is not designed to manage more than one task at a time and may produce irrelevant or inappropriate responses.
Bias in Training Data: The data used to train ChatGPT-3.5 includes biases and stereotypes reflective of historical inequalities present in society. Therefore, the outputs from ChatGPT-3.5 can sometimes be biased and not entirely objective.
Grammatical and Accuracy Issues: As a language model, ChatGPT-3.5 relies on vast amounts of training data that may contain grammatical errors and misspellings. The current limitations of AI technology mean that it cannot always detect or correct these issues. Furthermore, because it generates responses based on probabilities, it may occasionally produce outputs that are grammatically incorrect or contain typographical errors.
ChatGPT-4 vs. ChatGPT-3.5: Key Enhancements
ChatGPT-4 marks a significant upgrade from ChatGPT-3.5 with several new capabilities, enhancing its efficiency and accuracy for complex tasks. Here's a brief overview of the three major improvements in ChatGPT-4:
Extended Context Handling: ChatGPT-4 can process up to 25,000 words at once—eight times more than ChatGPT-3.5. This capability makes it adept at handling large-scale content creation, document analysis, and prolonged conversations, thanks to a more advanced deep-learning framework that leverages increased data and computational power.
Visual Input Capability: Unlike its predecessor, GPT-4 can interpret both text and images, allowing it to perform tasks like creating labels, analyzing, and classifying visual content. This feature enables more precise queries and richer, more useful outputs from a variety of visual documents.
Enhanced Creativity: GPT-4 exhibits a higher level of creativity, supporting users in generating original content such as poems, songs, and screenplays. It provides innovative and imaginative responses, pushing the boundaries of AI-assisted creativity, although it has yet to match human creativity fully.
These functionalities come at a subscription cost of $20 per month, promising a more robust and versatile tool for users seeking enhanced interaction with AI.
Choosing the Best ChatGPT Model for Your Needs
Selecting the right GPT model is crucial and depends on understanding the unique features and potential of each version. Whether you're developing AI-driven solutions, integrating AI into business operations, or exploring innovative applications, the choice of model can greatly influence the results.
Here’s a comparison of the attributes and capabilities of GPT-3, GPT-4, and GPT-5 to help determine their strengths and suitability for various applications.
Features Comparison
ChatGPT-3: Known for its impressive text generation, translation, and question-answering abilities, GPT-3 boasts a substantial parameter count of over 175 billion. It performs well in creative text formats but sometimes lacks coherence and grammatical accuracy.
ChatGPT-4: With a massive estimated parameter count of over 10 trillion, GPT-4 enhances its predecessor's capabilities by producing more coherent, creative, and grammatically sound text. It translates languages, answers questions, assists with creative tasks, and is useful in education and customer service.
ChatGPT-5: Likely featuring a much larger parameter count than GPT-4, GPT-5 offers enhanced text generation, question-answering, translation abilities, and task-oriented capabilities with multilingual proficiency. Its performance improvements span accuracy, analysis, and summarization, making it suitable for a broad range of applications including content creation, education, research, translation, customer service, and code generation.
Understanding these distinctions will aid in choosing the most appropriate GPT model for specific needs, maximizing the benefits of AI integration across various sectors.
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