If you have been paying attention to the news cycle or scrolling through your social media feed of late, then chances are you have heard about the AI of the hour: ChatGPT.
Since its release in November last year, ChatGPT has been attracting headlines for its much-hyped potential, which—depending on your view of AI—will either transform work for the better by helping us with mundane and complicated tasks or will encroach disastrously into territory best navigated by sentient beings.
Forbes Advisor decided to put the tool to the test, by asking it about its knowledge of consumer finance, its AI rivals and what it thought of itself and its abilities. Here is our guide, and our verdict, on the pros and cons of ChatGPT.
What Is ChatGPT?
ChatGTP was developed by US company OpenAI, which specialises in artificial intelligence tools for human use. OpenAI describes ChatGPT as a sibling model to another of its tools, InstructGPT, which is trained to follow human prompts and provide detailed responses to queries.
Owing to its chat box format, which opens up a dialogue between human and AI, ChatGPT allows users to request information on highly specific topics—from quantum computing and processing code to the mechanics of the human heart or the principles of flower arrangement. In this way it apes the brain-dump, question-and-answer format of Google search, although instead of producing multiple answers on a search engine results page (SERP), ChatGPT acts as the sole authority delivering responses.
