This AI chatbot is blowing people’s minds. It thinks out of the box, comes up with detailed answers

From historical arguments to poems on cryptocurrency, users took to Twitter to share their surprise at the detailed answers ChatGPT provided, after the startup sought user feedback on the AI model Wednesday.

OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman said in a tweet Thursday that there has been “a lot more demand” than expected.

OpenAI has made headlines over its GPT-3 software that allows AI models to respond intelligently to text prompts. Earlier this year, the second version of its DALL-E model went viral for its ability to create photo-realistic images from user submissions.

OpenAI was co-founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Altman with other investors about seven years ago to develop AI technologies that “benefits all of humanity”.

Discover the stories of your interest

Chatbot technology is not new, although its deployment has seen mixed success. Microsoft’s AI bot ‘Tay’ was taken down in 2016 after Twitter users taught it to say racist, sexist and offensive remarks. Another developed by Meta suffered similar issues this year.

Developers acknowledge the model “sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers” and can be “excessively verbose” due to the training it received from humans.

While most people were delighted with the bot’s musings, some were quick to point out flaws, such as the model giving a detailed but incorrect answer to a question on algebra, and its ability to override limits on output related to issues like gore, crime and racism.