What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT was launched on 30th November 2022 and surpassed one million users in less than a week, according to OpenAI who are behind it. It’s impressed many users who have tried it, but what is it? I’ll let ChatGPT introduce themselves: 

“I am ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI. I have been trained on a diverse dataset of internet text to generate human-like text in response to a prompt. I am able to understand and respond to a wide range of questions and prompts, making me useful for a variety of natural language processing tasks such as language translation, text summarization, and conversation simulation. I am here to assist you, feel free to ask me any question or give me a prompt.” 

Impressive, right? 

How can it be used?

Here at Geeks, we’re curious about ChatGPT! We’ve been playing with it a lot and across our team, there is a lot of excitement about the technology. We’re already beginning to implement some automations using ChatGPT into our operations.

Many users are exploring the lengths and widths that ChatGPT can be used, with OpenAI warning users that ‘it is not intended to give advice’ and while they have safeguards in place in which the system is trained to decline inappropriate requests, it may occasionally ‘generate incorrect or misleading information’, however they encourage feedback to enable their goal of improving their model and making it safer. Because of this feedback-collection phase, ChatGPT is currently free to use.  

ChatGPT considers themselves helpful for: 

1. “Language Translation: ChatGPT can be fine-tuned to understand and translate text from one language to another. 
2. Text Summarization: ChatGPT can be used to automatically summarize long pieces of text, making it useful for extracting key information from articles and documents. 
3. Conversation Simulation: ChatGPT can be used to simulate human-like conversations, making it useful for creating chatbots and virtual assistants. 
4. Content Creation: ChatGPT can be used to generate creative writing and assist with content creation for a variety of applications such as fiction writing, news articles, and more. 
5. Question Answering: ChatGPT can be used to answer questions by understanding and extracting the relevant information from a given context, making it useful for building FAQ systems and knowledge bases.” 

We were curious as to how well it could answer some IT related questions, so we gave it a go:

What is an MSP? 

“MSP stands for Managed Service Provider. It is a company that provides a range of IT services to businesses, typically on a subscription basis. These services may include things like network management, data backup and recovery, and software updates. MSPs often act as an outsourced IT department for businesses, handling tasks that would otherwise be handled by in-house staff. This allows businesses to focus on their core operations while leaving the management of IT infrastructure and systems to the MSP.”

Can you summarise that in 50 words? 

“An MSP (Managed Service Provider) is a company that provides IT services to businesses on a subscription basis. They act as an outsourced IT department, handling tasks such as network management and software updates, allowing businesses to focus on core operations.”

Can you put it into 3 bullet points? 

• “An MSP is a company that provides IT services to businesses on a subscription basis. 
• They act as an outsourced IT department, handling tasks such as network management, data backup and recovery and software updates. 
• MSPs allows businesses to focus on their core operations while leaving the management of IT infrastructure and systems to the MSP.“

Can you create some blog titles related to MSPs? 

1. “Why Every Business Needs an MSP: The Benefits of Outsourcing IT” 
2. “The Importance of Cybersecurity for MSPs and Their Clients” 
3. “How an MSP Can Help Your Business Grow and Stay Competitive” 
4. “The Future of Managed Services: What to Expect from MSPs in the Coming Years” 

Can you create 4 more? 

1. “Why MSPs are Essential for Managing Remote Workforce” 
2. “MSPs and Data Management: How to Keep Your Business Data Safe and Secure” 
3. “The Role of MSPs in Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery” 
4. “The Future of MSPs in the Post-Pandemic World: Opportunities and Challenges” 

We’re encouraging you to be curious and see what questions it can answer in your industry! Give it a go here. It’s very popular so it may be full capacity, but if you’re lucky there may be space. 

Are there any limitations?

Although it is a powerful language model, ChatGPT does possess some limitations. For example, it has been trained on a vast amount of text, however it lacks context awareness, which can lead to irrelevant responses.  

Another limitation is the potential for bias, this is because the dataset that the service has been trained on may contain biases.  

A further limitation is that it is lacking in knowledge on current news and events after 2021, it’s also not connected to the internet, so the information given may not be current.  

However, a new version is set to be released soon and with Microsoft recently announcing general availability of ChatGPT within their products, we’ll see what happens…