The conquest of human curiosity has always been intriguing. In earlier times, people used to look their queries up in different books and reading materials but ever since the introduction of the internet, the domain stands completely overturned. We’ve been witnessing a ‘web war’ among various search engines, namely Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Each tries to overpower the other with novel and exciting features to best serve the interests of the end user. Needless to say, such cut-throat competition has massively helped the masses.
In this web war, it is my opinion that Google has been consistently emerging as the undisputed winner. Google is no more a search engine, it’s a verb, an emotion. “Stuck somewhere? Google it.” Its impact on lives all over the world has truly been profound.
If there is something certain in today’s world it is “UNCERTAINTY”.
Artificial Intelligence (AI), since its inception, has changed the role of man drastically; from eating up routine jobs to even performing as self-sufficient operating units such as vending machines, the impact of AI has been massive. The purpose of introducing AI has always been to make human lives simpler and easier to allow humans to focus on areas that specifically require human qualities and abilities.
The latest band of AI introduced in the market is ChatGPT. Let’s first move into its roots before exploring what it is or what it does. With almost everyone aware of Elon Musk’s endeavours like Tesla, SpaceX, and PayPal; the world’s richest person is also one of the hands behind this saga. Open AI, the parent company of ChatGPT was founded in the year 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, USA with Elon Musk and Sam Altman serving as the initial board members. They also saw collaboration from other tech experts like PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
Open AI is essentially a research company, it aims to help humanity via artificial intelligence. The company has stood upon its grounds firmly as of today. There were some internal problems in the year 2018, with Musk resigning from the board. Reasons for the same can be debated with conflict of interest between Tesla and his pet project and some even point to the fact of Musk not having the same views of the future as the other directors. The company today is governed by a non-profit; Greg Brockman (Chairman), Ilya Sutskever (Chief Scientist), and Sam Altman (CEO) are the three faces heading the same.
The most recent development in generative artificial intelligence in the IT sector is ChatGPT, a chatbot introduced by Open AI in November 2022. Just launching something new, does not guarantee its success; let’s look at how ChatGPT has fared.
Time taken to reach 1 million users: · Netflix – 3.5 years · Facebook – 10 months · Spotify – 5 months · Instagram – 2.5 months · ChatGPT – 5 days
ChatGPT does have an incredible head start. Capitalizing upon the same is what the company now has to focus on.
With a basic overview of the company and its structure, let’s now dive into how ChatGPT actually works.
With the aid of ChatGPT, users may generate questions and reply fast and precisely. To analyse the data and produce a solution, it employs a vast array of algorithms. Various topics and data sources, including books, websites, news stories, blogs, and others, are used to instruct the system. Complex question responses can be provided by ChatGPT quickly and efficiently. The algorithms used by ChatGPT is what is its unique point.
Another aspect to look into is how to use ChatGPT.
Using ChatGPT is somewhat different from using Google. With the program still relatively new, the following points should be kept in mind to get a satisfactory response:
Use simple sentences with proper grammar; complex and sentences should be avoided.
Slang, abbreviations, and words with multiple meanings should be avoided. Since the program is still in its initial stages, some solutions may be inaccurate or inconsistent.
After understanding how the program works, and how to use the program, let’s now take a look at some of its virtues and vices.
Advantages Users can get assistance from ChatGPT when it comes to copying, pasting, or summarising content for blogs, periodicals, and even assignments. One can use ChatGPT to aid in overall planning. It can assist by taking all the benefits and drawbacks into account and recommending the best course of action. ChatGPT can even be used to code or write scripts. It can give acceptable solutions to qualitative queries.
Limitations Overusing ChatGPT might lead to indifference and laziness. Instead of trying to come up with a solution or researching the solution ourselves whenever we encounter a difficulty of any kind, we might skip the hassle and simply type it into ChatGPT. This eliminates our capacity for emotional learning, situational learning, and problem-solving, all of which are crucial for human development. We also run the danger of plagiarism while utilizing ChatGPT. The program can swiftly provide findings without us needing to perform any investigation because it is based on AI technology. This might result in people merely copying and pasting solutions without fully comprehending them, which would indicate a lack of knowledge or problem-solving abilities. Last but not least, the knowledge of ChatGPT is restricted to events up to 2021.
With a broad understanding of ChatGPT, it’s our turn to understand how Google might be at risk.
Google with its dominance in the sector, has always been the go-to option in people’s minds. But Google hasn’t updated itself over the years. Features of voice search, textual recognition, etc. maybe the additions but the prime concept remains the same: going through different websites providing information and then framing out the feasible solution rests upon the end user. With the web being an open space, false information is also evident and the process is kind of time-consuming. It is tiresome to keep scrolling pages full of material time and time again to arrive at a solution. Not to forget the websites are full of advertisements and some of which might even be disturbing to the audience.
A substitute is what some people vouch for.
ChatGPT provides that with its unique algorithms.
The AI does the task of searching through web pages for finding relevant material to solve a query. This saves a lot of time on the part of the user and is a big relief for people working on tight deadlines. Industry juggernauts are also willing to fund Open AI now. Microsoft was thinking about investing $10 billion in Open AI, the business behind ChatGPT. The next round of investment from Microsoft and other venture capital companies would raise the AI start-up valuation to $29 billion. According to reports, Microsoft would provide $10 billion in exchange for a 75% share of the earnings Open AI makes up to the point where the investment has been repaid. Microsoft would then receive a 49% interest in Open AI once they recover their $10 billion investment. The claims have been circulating for more than a week, but neither party has verified any of this. With Microsoft coming into the picture the floor is now an open arena. Microsoft would like to gain its market share back in search engines as its own software Bing has hardly been able to cope with Google Chrome. It appears that Microsoft is ready to become competitive in this space as they plan on incorporating ChatGPT into Bing for more accurate and helpful search results. Google has earned maximum revenue from the advertisement on its various platforms. The latest Q3 reports of Alphabet, the parent company of Google showcased, the revenue as $69.1 billion of which $39.5 billion (57.2%) was from search ads. This sums up that Google’s revenue primarily depends upon search engine performance and the ads associated with the same. With ChatGPT coming into the picture, the same could be hit massively as experts claim. However, predicting the same at this moment could be deemed too early.
Is ChatGPT the end of Google? As far as my understanding of the topic goes, no. Any AI bot, including ChatGPT, is unable to search the internet for information. According to Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, “It does a terrific job at being creative, but it is not factually true every time you summon it, and if you are doing so, it is not a smart idea.” Therefore, at least temporarily, AI chatbots cannot take the position of a search engine. But what ChatGPT does is that it gives Google the task to figure out its methodologies and also look into the space of AI in the future. The revenue of Google from search ads could be hit with some market share moving to the ChatGPT platform. It will be interesting to see how the future molds from here, with Google adopting a more dynamic approach and Open AI capitalizing on its recent growth.
By Harsh Vardhan Maheshwari