GPT-4 -GETS- GUTSY : TECH'S MASTER ESSAY

Still not as smart as a human being : but OpenAI's update chatbot is more accurate, but it continues to make things up.

A new version of the technology that powers an A.I. chatbot that captivated the tech industry four months ago has improved on its predecessor. 

It is an expert on an array of subjects, even wowing doctors with its medical advice. It can describe images, and it's close to telling jokes that are almost funny.

But the long-rumored new artificial intelligence system, GPT-4.still has a few of the quirks and makes some of the same habitual mistakes that baffled researchers when the chatbot, ChatGPT, was introduced.

And though it's an awfully good test taker, the system - from the San Francisco start-up OpenAI - is not on the verge of matching human intelligence.Here is a brief guide to GPT-4.

New Precision : When Chris Nicholson, an A.I. expert and a partner with capital firm Page One Ventures, used GPT-4 on a recent afternoon, he told the bot that he was an English speaker with no knowledge of Spanish.

He asked for a syllabus that could teach him basics, and the bot provided one that was detailed and well organized. It even provided a wide range of techniques for learning and remembering Spanish words [though not all of its suggestions hit the mark].

Mr. Nicholson had asked for similar help from the previous version of ChatGPT, which relied on GPT-3.5. It, too, provided a syllabus, but its suggestions were more general and less helpful.

''It has broken through the precision barrier,'' Mr. Nicholson said. ''It is including more facts, and they are very often right.''

More Accuracy : When Oren Etzioni, an A.I. researcher and professor, first tried the new bot, he asked a straightforward question : 

''What is the relationship between Oren Etzioni and Eli Etzioni?'' The bot responded correctly.

The previous version of ChatGPT's answer to that question was always wrong. Getting it right indicates that the chatbot has a broader range of knowledge.

But it still makes mistakes.

The bot went on to say, ''Oren Etzioni is a computer scientist and the CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence [AI2], while Eli Etzioni is an entrepreneur.''

Most of that is accurate, but the bot - whose training was completed in August - did not realize that Dr. Etzioni had recently stepped down as the Allen's Institute's chief executive.

Description of images : GPT4 has a new ability to respond to images as well as text. Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and co-founder, demonstrated how the system could describe an image from the Hubble Space Telescope in painstaking detail. The description went on for paragraphs.

It can also answer questions about an image. If given a photograph of the inside of a refrigerator, it can suggest a few meals to make from what's on hand.

Open AI has not yet released this portion of the technology to the public, but a company called Be My Eyes is already using GPT-4 to build services that could give a more detailed idea of the images encountered on the internet or snapped in the real world.

Still Hallucinating : The new bot still makes stuff up. Called ''hallucination,'' the problem haunts all the leading chatbots. Because the systems do not have an understanding of what is true and what is not, they may generate text that is completely false.

When asked for the addresses of websites that described the latest cancer research, it sometimes generated internet addresses that did not exist.

The Master Essay continues. The World Students Society thanks authors Cade Metz and Keith Collins.