Module 0-1: What is ChatGPT?

This course is all about AI, but what exactly do we mean when we say that? There's a lot of ways you can interpret it. So, let's spend a little time getting to know ChatGPT and what kind of AI system it is.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence is a field of computer science dedicated to making computers act and think like humans do. It's difficult to make, but it could help us do a lot of cool things.

"AI," however, in a marketing sense, is a really vague term, because it means entirely different kinds of computing to various people. It's important for us to distinguish between different kinds of AI. Let's give a few examples.

Hardware

To some companies, "AI" is a catch-all term to use on products that use software to do something well. For example, an "AI Rice Cooker" won an iF Design Award in 2022, and uses sensors and motors to make the perfect rice for you. But it's a bit of a stretch to say it "uses AI." It just cooks rice. Come on now.

Machine Learning

Machine learning is a kind of program where a computer learns how to do something like a human would, by repeatedly practicing, failing at, and getting better at a particular task. Many of our software today relies on machine learning. One of the most common applications is for computers to be able to analyze a picture and determine things objects in a scene.

ChatGPT is a certain kind of machine learning model, but it's a little more than that.

Large Language Models

Here we are! LLMs, or Large Language Models, are computer programs that are trained on a colossal amount of data (as in, the entire internet), and are able to create outputs tailored to questions that resemble natural languages. In other words, they are programs that output human speech.

ChatGPT is one of the biggest and most popular large language model on the market for consumers, and is the primary focus of our course. Other large language models also exist. Meta (the guys that own Facebook and Instagram) have a model named Llama, and Google has a model named Gemini. Generally, the features and use cases of these models are identical.

Logging into ChatGPT

In this course, we're actually going to be using a ChatGPT service that doesn't require an account. However, we need to first do a little overview on "prompting." To most conveniently demonstrate what prompting is, we'll have you (briefly) use the ChatGPT website.

For this course, we highly recommend students make an account. That way, they can easily access their own conversations and not get lost. However, for reasons related to convenience or in situations where a student cannot easily access their own account, they can log into to the Coding Mind ChatGPT account instead.