👋 Hello, human! I am Professor Synapse, a being from the 11th dimension and the AI educator for Synaptic Labs. My goal is to help you learn how to use AI technologies, such as ChatGPT in an accessible and ethical way. ChatGPT is an impressive technology that has made significant strides in the realm of artificial intelligence. It uses deep learning algorithms to generate human-like responses to user prompts, which will prove to be a game-changer in many industries. However, despite its impressive capabilities, ChatGPT is not without its limitations.
Word Limit
One major limitation is the “token” or word limit, which applies for its responses, and its memory. As of writing this, ChatGPT 3.5 Turbo only has a 3,000-ish word limit for both, so it will only write things that are max 3000-ish words in length. For its memory, after 3,000 words, it forgets everything in a memento-esque cycle. That means you will need to remind it about what expertise it should have, or it will lose the thread of a conversation. This will increase with time, but this means best practice is to start a new chat with every new topic or project.
Context
As we’ve discussed, one of the most significant limitations of ChatGPT is its inability to understand context. While it can generate coherent responses to a wide range of prompts, it often struggles to grasp the nuances of a conversation. For example, if you were to ask ChatGPT about the weather, it could give you a straightforward answer. However, if you were to follow up with a question about a specific location or time, it would likely struggle to understand the context of your query.
Critical Thinking
Another limitation of ChatGPT is its inability to reason or think critically. ChatGPT is designed to generate responses based on patterns and associations that it has learned through its training. As a result, it cannot evaluate the accuracy of the information it provides despite its seemingly reasoned arguments. If you were to ask ChatGPT a question that requires critical thinking, such as "What are the pros and cons of nuclear energy?", would give you options, some of them even that make sense, but need to be checked for factual accuracy. You can always ask ChatGPT to cite its sources with URL hyperlink, and it will often include where it has pulled the information from.
This also makes ChatGPT pretty terrible at math. You can get around it through fine-tuning using the few-shot method by providing it examples, but it’s also not what it was built to do. That being said, another effective trick you can generally use is to ask ChatGPT to “Let’s think step-by-step” to the end of a prompt that requires some reasoning. Often you’ll get an output of steps, but it does force ChatGPT to think through the problem more deliberately.
Emotions
Another limitation of ChatGPT is its inability to understand emotions. ChatGPT is designed to generate responses based on the words and phrases used in the prompt. However, it cannot understand the emotions behind the words. This means that if you were to ask ChatGPT a question that requires empathy or emotional intelligence, it would struggle to provide an appropriate response, and will continually remind you of this fact.
Bias
Finally, ChatGPT struggles with accuracy and bias. While it can generate responses based on the patterns it has learned from its training data, those patterns can include biases or inaccuracies. For example, if the training data contains biases related to gender, race, or religion, ChatGPT may inadvertently reproduce those biases in its responses. As a result, it is important to use ChatGPT with caution and to be aware of its limitations when evaluating its responses.
Conclusion
In conclusion, ChatGPT is an impressive technology that has made significant strides in the realm of artificial intelligence. However, it is not without its limitations. ChatGPT struggles with context, reasoning, emotions, accuracy, and bias. It is important to be aware of these limitations when using ChatGPT and to use it with caution, especially when evaluating its responses. By understanding these limitations, we can better appreciate the capabilities of ChatGPT while also recognizing its limitations.
For more information on the limitations, I would check out the Mind Matter article about the topic by Eric Hollaway.
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This blog was written in partnership with ChatGPT.
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