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14.1.2: ChatGPT

  • Page ID
    261562
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    What is ChatGPT exactly? How does it work? Where does it get the information it uses? ChatGPT is an AI tool that has been getting a lot of attention since it was released in November 2022. It uses natural language processing techniques to respond to user-generated prompts. The "GPT" initials stand for generative pretrained transformer. Put simply: You ask ChatGPT a question or provide a prompt, it replies using natural language.

    What do you need to know about ChatGPT?

    • OpenAI (the company that designed ChatGPT) collects a lot of data from ChatGPT users.
      • The privacy policy states that this data can be shared with third-party vendors, law enforcement, affiliates, and other users.
    • This tool should not be used by children under 13 (data collection from children under 13 violates the United States’ Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule - COPPA).
    • The Terms of Use (End-User License Agreement) state that “You must be at least 13 years old to use the Services. If you are under 18, you must have your parent or legal guardian’s permission to use the Services” (OpenAI, 2022, para. 2).
    • While you can request to have your ChatGPT account deleted, the prompts that you input into ChatGPT cannot be deleted. If you, or your students, were to ask ChatGPT about sensitive or controversial topics, this data cannot be removed.
    • ChatGPT is not always trustworthy.
      • ChatGPT was trained using a massive dataset of text written by humans that was pulled from the Internet.
      • Thus, the responses can reflect the biases of the humans who wrote the text used in the training dataset.
      • ChatGPT is not connected to the Internet and the data used to train it was collected prior to 2021.
      • According to the FAQs, ChatGPT “has limited knowledge of world and events after 2021 and may also occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content” (Natalie, para. 4).
    • ChatGPT makes stuff up!
      • To make up for knowledge gaps (e.g., lack of training data to pull information from), ChatGPT will provide a response to the best of its ability (often made up) rather than say “error” or “cannot compute.”
      • The dialogue format “answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests,” according to OpenAI (para. 1).

    (This section adapted from Trust, pp. 3, 6, 8, & 10).


    This page titled 14.1.2: ChatGPT is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Sarah Klein.

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