Microsoft is reportedly investing a whopping $10 billion in OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT and DALL-E. The eight-year-old firm with no mainstream product or revenue model has dominated the news headlines ever since it released an AI Chatbot to market in November 2022. So, what is ChatGPT and what can it do?
What is ChatGPT and What Can It do?
ChatGPT—the GPT stands for generative pretrained transformer – is a specialized GPT-3 based natural language model that can perform a range of tasks, from formulating answers and generating content to having realistic conversations. It applies machine learning (ML) algorithms optimized for human-like dialog scenarios.
ChatGPT is based-off a generative AI algorithm called transformers, a large language modelling Encoder-Decoder neural network. Until recently, machine learning was largely limited to classification and predictive modelling based on supervised and unsupervised learning. Generative AI was a breakthrough of sorts as these algorithms can create new content including text, audio, video, images and even code.
Why is Microsoft so gung-ho about ChatGPT?
Microsoft has seen a steady decline in growth in personal computer revenue, while revenue from its cloud segment Azure forms the largest share and is the highest growth area. However, with a crowded market including the likes of Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, the competition in this aggressively growing market is so fierce that these leading providers achieve feature parity in matter of weeks, if not months.
Download: ChatGPT and Generative AI in the Workplace
Enter ChatGPT. If Microsoft can successfully integrate ChatGPT use cases with some of the huge corporate and consumer datasets that it houses as part of its productivity offerings like Linkedin, O365, Teams and its Azure suite, then this could be the silver bullet that can help revive Bing and catapult its cloud business growth beyond the competition. This could provide the key differentiator for Microsoft, adding the missing link of feeding contextual data intelligence to enable hyper-personalized result sets from ChatGPT.
As the world has learned over the last few months, ChatGPT has widespread use cases ranging from mission critical workloads to generating jokes on the fly; from disrupting supply chains to providing recipes for butter chicken; from designing Ecommerce websites and doing technical reviews to acting as a social media influencer or advertiser.
Like most AI models and tools out there, ChatGPT’s result set sees an exponential increase in relevancy when additional context is provided through contextual prompts. And this is where the wealth of corporate and consumer data that Microsoft holds can start yielding quick and rich dividends.
Potential use cases for ChatGPT
Sample use cases include rich UI based interfacing services. This could look like richer employee services and assistance using the Active Directory personnel info for better employee engagement. Integrated with Bing it could help provide an enhanced cognitive search function that can learn from your immediate past actions on what your exact need is and yield hyper contextualized and personalized result sets. As an add-on to Azure it could act as a cost optimizer and virtual guide based on a user’s subscription and usage history.
We could very soon be living in a world where ChatGPT acts as a personalized LinkedIn recruiter using your corporate and LinkedIn profile. Emails could be made easier with ChatGPT working as an active email responder, learning your personal communication style. It has already shown its value as a developer assistant, able to provide advanced boiler plate code to truly enable kickstarter packages.
This list is by no means even an attempt to document all the many ways ChatGPT can disrupt each of Microsoft’s product offerings from Microsoft. The sky is the limit and we have just begun scratching the surface. While the world puzzles out the pros and cons of this new power, with millions wait with bated breath to see what advancements in generative AI mean for their career, we would all do well to start tackling difficult questions about risk and regulation before it’s too late and we’re left playing catchup.
Satish Subramani is the technical delivery manager at Bottle Rocket.
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