(The Washington Post illustration; Shutterstock)
The artificial intelligence research lab OpenAI on Tuesday launched the newest version of its language software, GPT-4, an advanced tool for analyzing images and mimicking human speech, pushing the technical and ethical boundaries of a rapidly proliferating wave of AI.
OpenAI’s earlier product, ChatGPT, captivated and unsettled the public with its uncanny ability to generate elegant writing, unleashing a viral wave of college essays, screenplays and conversations — though it relied on an older generation of technology that hasn’t been cutting-edge for more than a year.
GPT-4, in contrast, is a state-of-the-art system capable of creating not just words but describing images in response to a person’s simple written commands. When shown a photo of a boxing glove hanging over a wooden seesaw with a ball on one side, for instance, a person can ask what will happen if the glove drops, and GPT-4 will respond that it would hit the seesaw and cause the ball to fly up.
The buzzy launch capped months of hype and anticipation over an AI program, known as a large language model, that early testers had claimed was remarkably advanced in its ability to reason and learn new things. In fact, the public had a sneak preview of the tool: Microsoft announced Tuesday that the Bing AI chatbot, released last month, had been using GPT-4 all along.
Read more at Washington Post.