AI, ChatGPT, and Other Generative Tools: For Students: ChatGPT Basics

This guide provides details on how to address AI, ChatGPT, and other tools to mitigate academic dishonesty in the classroom.

ChatGPT, Generative AI, and the Basics

Generative AI, or generative artificial intelligence, is a form of machine learning that is able to produce text, video, images, and other types of content. ChatGPT is an example of generative AI applications that produce text or images based on user-given prompts or dialogue.

Decorative image of AI robot that has text developing behind its head, demonstrating the way in which AI searches and develops language.ChatGPT stands for “Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer”, and it's a generative AI language model that acts in a conversational way.  It is a language model trained on extensive amounts of text data, enabling it to generate human-like responses to user prompts.

ChatGPT is not a search engine where you are given a set of results to a specific search, but instead it creates “new content” by predicting the word most likely to come next (e.g. based on HUGE dataset -- publicly available Internet sites as of 2020).

Language Learning Models (LLMs), like ChatGPT, are designed to model human language and use mathematical models to predict what the next word is most likely to be based on what you are asking for.

Keep in mind: they don't think. They don't understand, read, choose or give you the "best information." Sometimes it might feel or seem like it, but this isn't how the technology works. That said, they also won't tell you where they got the information they're pulling from, and who is doing the work behind the scenes. Many, if not most, are unregulated and are influenced by how we all interact with it. 

ChatGPT-4

What's new in ChatGPT-4?

Open AI's new update of ChatGPT, GPT-4 was released on March 14, 2023. The ChatGPT-4 chatbot allows users to interact with AI more effectively and efficiently. Users will be able to produce content in their own style as ChatGPT recognizes and understands users' writing style. ChatGPT-4 uses natural language processing techniques to provide results with as much accuracy as it can. It is far more reliable in terms of producing legitimate results.

OpenAi revealed that ChatGPT-4 scored much higher than the previous versions in some tests. For more detailed info, significant changes and improvements are outlined below.

How do I access ChatGPT 4?

ChatGPT-4 is only available to premium subscription users. To access the portal, you’ll need to subscribe to ChatGPT+ first.

  • Go the to ChatGPT website – https://chat.openai.com/
  • Select the ‘Upgrade to Plus’ button. Once upgraded, you’ll be able to directly access GPT-4.