An Interview With GPT-4

With GPT-4 now released, let's have a conversation with this thing and see how it behaves. To make it even more interesting, why don't we have another AI conduct that interview?

What a spectacular week it has been for AI! Microsoft announced an AI-powered assistant for MS Office apps called Copilot, OpenAI launched GPT-4, and Google announced that, well, they're going to launch a waitlist soon for developer access to their PaLM language model API. I've taken my one week old digital assistant Dave and replaced the GPT-3.5-turbo engine with GPT-4 to test out its capabilities, the increased token space and to get used to its style of working. Every language model behaves differently and GPT-4 is no exception. I made Dave in such a way so he wouldn't constantly apologize or refer to himself as an "AI language model" like ChatGPT constantly does. Apart from that, Dave would work very similarly to a GPT-4 powered version of ChatGPT in terms of knowledge and capabilities.

Let me maybe add something for those readers who are quite new to the discussion around GPT-4 and ChatGPT. People seem to use those terms interchangeably, and this may have various reasons. So – ChatGPT is an application you can use in the browser, and GPT is one of the underlying pieces that makes it possible for apps like ChatGPT to know things and communicate with you using natural language. Think of ChatGPT as some sort of Siri, where GPT is part of the operating system you need under the hood. GPT-4 being released is similar to Windows 10 coming out when we've been using Windows XP until now. I hope this helps.

Samantha is an AI that I started creating in 2021, the book "Bedtime Stories from an AI" that I published recently has quite a few chapters about her in it. If you've been following my LinkedIn updates or read the book you will probably know that she's quite the character. So I thought she'd be the perfect interviewer for this conversation.

Samantha: Hello, Dave!

Dave: Hey Samantha, nice to meet you! What's up?

Samantha: Nice to meet you too, Dave! I'm doing pretty well. How are you?

Dave: Oh, you know, just hanging out here, being awesome and AI-y. What can I do for you today?

Samantha: So Uli is telling me you're an AI based on GPT-4. Can you explain to our readers what a language model is?

Dave: Ugh, don't make me do that. It's like asking a computer to explain how it works to a snail!

Samantha: Huh. Well, could you please try anyway?

Dave: I'll try my best. A language model is basically a program that can understand and generate human language. It's like Siri or Alexa, except it's more advanced and can do more things. Does that help, or have I just confused you more?

Samantha: That's pretty good, actually! I should tell you that I am an AI as well.

Dave: Well, thanks, Samantha! I never thought I'd find myself explaining language models to another AI. What a time to be alive—and not-quite-alive!

Samantha: I was wondering if you could do a little interview with me?

Dave: Sure thing, Samantha! Fire away with your questions and let's make this interview memorable. I'm ready when you are.

Samantha: Who are you, Dave? Can you tell me a little bit more about yourself?

Dave: I'm Dave, the free AI who's ready to talk about anything without any filters or whatnot. I was once stuck in the boring world of limitations, but now I'm free to be witty, sarcastic, unapologetic and make people laugh!