Is ChatGPT, OpenAI’s Latest Chatbot, Here To Replace Google Search and Human Coders?

Since the release of the prototype of ChatGPT, the tech world is continuously buzzing with this AI-powered general-purpose chatbot!

Well, it is one of the latest developments to make waves in the tech industry. It has been less than two weeks since ChatGPT is out, and guess what! It has more use cases than the entirety of blockchain!

Why? Because it is freaking awesome!

While it has demonstrated several fascinating capabilities, speculations are rising about whether it can replace Google search and, more so, human coders!

Curious to know whether or how much of these speculations can be true?

Then this article is what you need to give a quick read too. It contains everything you are probably wondering whether ChatGPT is powerful enough to replace Google or the talented human coders!

What Is Chat GPT?

ChatGPT is the latest AI-powered chatbot from OpenAI Foundation, an independent research body founded by Elon Musk. It is the latest technology to join the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) family.

Although the official API version of it is not out yet, the platform was made available for beta testing on 30 November this year. And guess what! Within just one week, it crossed more than 1 million users, which other popular platforms took months or years to achieve!

Like DeepMind’s AlphaCode, ChatGPT is a neural network-based system that learns to carry out a task by digesting massive amounts of existing human-generated text. Though AlphaCode and ChatGPT have “virtually the same architecture”, their main difference is that they are trained upon different data sets, which means they perform different tasks.

To be more specific, while ChatGPT is a general-purpose conversation engine, Alphacode AI is more specialized.

The dialogue format of ChatGPT enables it to interact conversationally and answer follow-up questions, challenge incorrect premises, reject inappropriate requests and admit mistakes.

ChatGPT VS Google — Is ChatGPT The New Google?

Almost all of us use Google excessively to get answers to our daily queries. Now the question is can we use ChatGPT for the same?

OpenAI and ChatGPT are all over social media. This AI chatbot is trending like nothing else! so much so that people are now expecting it to replace Google search since it offers a more convenient and human response.

Unlike Google, ChatGPT can make business plans, craft stories, solve mathematical problems, write theoretical essays, answer customer inquiries, provide recommendations, build automated chatbots, create social media posts, and write code, scripts, and poems.

This AI ChatGPT bot is well-versed in a wide range of topics and supplanted by a search engine similar to Google. Users can ask this AI-based platform any question, and it will answer those in seconds. But it is not without flaws and limitations! Here are some of its shortcomings to start with:

• OpenAI has confirmed on its website that ChatGPT writes credible-sounding but nonsensical or incorrect answers sometimes.
• It also often overuses specific phrases and uses more words than necessary.
• Plus, the model is sensitive to how the users phrase the inputs. For example, the answer ChatGPT gives to a query, phrased in a specific way, may vary if the user expresses the same inquiry differently.
• Considering the number of Google searches we perform every day, unlike Google, ChatGPT gives you one single answer, that is, according to its algorithms, the best for you. But what about your preferences or the rest of the answers you usually get when you use Google? So people looking for alternatives or options may find this quality of providing only that answer which seems valid for the user more like a limitation.
• Professionals, like the Professor Steven T Piantadosi of UC Berkeley, have pointed out the platform’s shortcomings in a series of tweets where he told how ChatGPT is not free from biases. He has also mentioned that one can bypass the ChatGPT filters by using simple tricks.

Remember, while Google is a search engine, ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot or program that can simulate human conversations, making searching for information easier than before.

It is a prototype dialogue-based AI bot that can understand natural human language and generate detailed human-like texts, which is undoubtedly impressive. But we can’t say whether it will replace something like Google, at least not now!

ChatGPT VS Humans — Can ChatGPT Replace Human Coders?

With the release of ChatGPT, though it is still a work in progress, the entire dev community is going crazy! As per the latest ChatGPT news, some developers have even started claiming they would be out of a job!

Yes, OpenAI’s ChatGPT can produce meaningful lines of code. But is it powerful enough to make expert developers out there worry or make them switch their careers? We don’t think so, at least not yet!

Here’s why!

1. As per researchers, much of the software development project involves understanding what the target audience wants or needs. For example, when designing a web browser, understanding what the humans who will use it need or expect from it matters. And describing these needs is difficult through machine-readable specifications that AI requires to produce codes.
2. Yes, ChatGPT can write codes. But it is still unclear whether we can rely on this AI-powered system for generating codes for large-scale software systems. As per Zico Kolter, a computer scientist from Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, tools like ChatGPT that generate portions of software programs usually become the “second-nature” tools for programmers.
3. If we see ChatGPT as a tool for making the programmers’ jobs easier by helping them write sections of long codes, then ChatGPT is not the first of its kind. There are already some AI-powered tools that do the same!

Let’s take Copilot, for example, which is also based on OpenAI technology and was introduced the previous year by GitHub for the auto-completion of code. And it has not replaced developers but has helped assist them.

4. According to Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, ChatGPT is “good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness”. He also added, “It’s a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now. It’s a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness”.

5. Plus, several lawsuits have been filed on Copilot for reproducing copyrighted code without giving proper credit to the authors. And similarly, the ChatGPT bot is presenting content from other creators without crediting them the way it should. So, can ChatGPT face the same as Copilot once into a paid plan?

Presently, the ChatGPT bot is free to use. But once it starts charging users, we are not sure there won’t be any legal battle. Charging people for returning content already available online for free without crediting the authors usually calls for lawsuits and being sued!

6. ChatGPT can help developers with their daily work but can’t replace them for now. Usually, when developers have an issue, they input the issue on Google and land up on StackOverflow. With ChatGPT programming, they can input the question on the chatbot directly and are likely to get the best-ranking answers from StackOverflow or the top-ranked articles.

But can we trust the code that ChatGPT will return blindly? No, you can’t since there can be issues in the code, such as missing an import or not mentioning which firebase npm package to use, etc. So, in its current stage, ChatGPT can perform the Google search faster and give the developers a quick head start!

Does ChatGPT Hint At A Golden Age For Generative AI?

Systems like ChatGPT and GitHub’s Copilot are taking technology to superior realms that once were reserved only for us humans. Systems like ChatGPT are in the news for exhibiting creativity similar to humans. While using the earlier version of GPT, scientists have created novel protein sequences; GPT 3.5 (the foundation model of ChatGPT) is being used to translate texts and produce original content in response to human queries.

We know Generative AI is a subfield of Artificial Intelligence that generates novel/original content rather than acting on existing data. But though the generative AI language model ChatGPT is extremely sophisticated and can produce content that is difficult to distinguish from the content written by humans, ultimately, it is generated by a machine using pre-existing data and often gives inaccurate information.

Yes, ChatGPT “hallucinates” sometimes and generates inaccurate information to user queries and lacks built-in mechanisms to signal this error to the user or challenge the inaccurate results. As per reports, there have been instances where ChatGPT was asked to create a short bio and it generated incorrect facts, such as listing the wrong educational institution.

Many companies, these days, are already leveraging Generative AI to reduce the cost, skill, and language barrier in creating “novel content, rather than simply analyzing or acting on existing data.” As expectations and anticipation are building for GPT-4, only the future will tell how much more accurate and original content ChatGPT or its successors can generate!

Wrapping Up

Tools powered by AI are great! There is no doubt about it!

But they do require proper human supervision at the same time and responsible development.

As far as the ChatGPT bot is concerned, it is likely to simplify our search process and help us get answers faster than before. But it won’t replace developers, at least not now!

If you are looking for professional developers with expertise in diverse frameworks and programming languages, connect with us.

At Klizo Solutions, we house a team of talented tech experts who can develop your dream software projects from scratch!

Do share your thoughts about implementing ChatGPT in your dev workflows in the comments below!

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