Microsoft is reportedly considering a $10 billion investment in San Francisco-based startup OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT.
The artificial intelligence-based chatbot became available to the public in November and quickly garnered both praise and criticism for its ability to churn out reams of human-sounding text based on a few simple prompts.
The chatbot is so convincing that schools across the United States are banning it from classrooms to prevent students from using it to cheat on assignments, and venture capital firms are looking into ways to use the tech in their daily operations.
Microsoft is apparently a fan of the technology. The company invested $1 billion worth of cash and cloud credits into OpenAI in 2019, and now it could be looking to increase its stake. So what is it exactly, and why is one of the biggest tech companies in the world interested?
ChatGPT uses what's called a "large language model" to read and translate text from a database and then predict future words in a sequence. This is similar to how Google Docs is able to predict the end of a sentence that you're writing, but ChatGPT is writing the entire sentence. The end result is something that sounds a lot like intelligent speech, but it's actually just a series of probabilities rapidly generated and then spit out for your reading pleasure (or displeasure).
While ChatGPT can approximate human speech, oftentimes the actual content doesn't make sense. Just scan social media for examples of how silly ChatGPT's output can be. As one critic recently argued in The Atlantic, it currently functions more as a toy than a tool.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also recognized that the technology has serious limits.
"ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness," he tweeted in December. "It's a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now."
That said, Altman is banking on continual improvements, which could explain why Microsoft is interested.
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On this episode of Cheddar Innovates: Evolution Devices CEO breaks down how the Evowalk wearable device can help those with walking impairments; Cresilon CEO explains how he's created a plant-based gel to easily treat wounds in both humans and animals; A look at Curiosity Stream's 'The Colorado Problem.'
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Joe Landolina, CEO and Co-Founder of Cresilon, joins Cheddar Innovates to discuss how he's created a plant-based gel to easily treat wounds in both humans and animals.
The virtual world of the metaverse continues to present a bright future for many artistic creators. A group of six mural artists from the Bay Area have decided to turn their painted and installed murals into a one-of-a-kind collectible. Thanks to NFTS these murals can be enhanced and extend far beyond just their physical walls. Muralist and Creative Director of the Bay Area mural program Rachel Wolfe Goldsmith, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
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