What is ChatGPT and can it be used in Russia?

What is the most famous chatbot and how it is treated in the world and Russia – in the Kommersant information.

What ChatGPT can do

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI. Its possibilities are as wide as possible: a chatbot can conduct dialogues with users, answer questions, write code and look for errors in it, develop business plans, write poetry, summarize scientific articles, and generate images as requested by users.

ChatGPT was launched on November 30, 2022. In just two months The audience of active users reached 100 million people. Reuters recognized ChatGPT fastest growing consumer app ever: No other project has reached similar numbers so quickly.

OpenAI has been developing ChatGPT since 2015, when the group of investors included Elon Musk. He and his partners invested the first billion dollars in the development of OpenAI. Then Microsoft added another billion in investments. OpenAI has released several products related to artificial intelligence technologies, but It was ChatGPT that brought the startup worldwide fame.

The abbreviation GPT in the name of the new service stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, that is, “generating trained transformer.” This program creates the illusion of the presence of a real person better than anything previously known. She remembers the context of the conversation, has a colossal amount of knowledge, speaks different languages, can compose prose, write poetry, find and correct errors in computer code. Initially, the knowledge base was limited to 2021, but later the developers added information until April 2023.

ChatGPT scandals

ChatGPT quickly gained popularity, but was greeted with caution by technology experts. In March 2023, more than a thousand experts, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, called for stopping the training of more powerful neural networks for six months due to a potential threat to the existence of humanity and develop safety protocols for working with these tools.

In May 2023, representatives of a number of technology corporations and leading universities in the world published a joint statement on the high risk of artificial intelligence for humanity at the global level and compared the danger of AI to a pandemic or nuclear war.

The danger of ChatGPT was felt even within OpenAI itself, where on November 17 Sam Altman was fired from his post as CEO because, according to the board of directors, he “was not candid” when interacting with the board. The company did not specify what exactly this was about. However, on the eve of the dismissal of Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, the company’s board of directors received a letter from in-house researchers warning about a discovery in the field of artificial intelligence that “could threaten humanity.” The dismissal of Sam Altman prompted the departure of a number of highly qualified employees from OpenAI, as well as President Greg Brockman and three leading scientists. However, on November 22, Mr. Altman was reinstated.

In addition to the hypothetical threat to humanity, regulators were interested in what materials ChatGPT is taught on and whether it is legal. In December 2023, Roskomnadzor sent a letter to a number of hosting providers about the identification of the GPTBot search robot from OpenAI. The agency recommends blocking the bot’s ability to view and analyze Internet pages to “exclude the collection of information about critical resource vulnerabilities” that are the responsibility of companies.

In July 2023, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began an investigation into OpenAI because the company may have violated consumer protection laws by providing them with false information.

Cybercriminals have also realized the power of neural networks, and in June 2023, Kaspersky Lab stated that Fraudsters have started using ChatGPT to craft smarter phishing emails: By using the bot, the attackers improved the literacy of the text and eliminated errors that previously could have been used to determine that the letter was fake.

In Russia, fifth-year student of the Russian State Humanitarian University Alexander Zhadan used a chatbot when writing a thesis, for the defense of which he received a “satisfactory” rating.

In general, the growth of public interest and at the same time concern regarding AI was caused precisely by the successes in the development of the latest generative neural network technologies like ChatGPT. According to many experts, such technologies can be dangerous in many ways, from creating high-quality fakes and threats to Internet security to risks in the global labor market.

Analogues of ChatGPT

The success of ChatGPT led to the emergence of numerous “clones”. In March 2023 Google announced the opening of access to its chatbot Bard, however, he received mixed reviews from users who noticed fakes and conspiracy theories in his answers. In June, Google introduced an updated Bard with support for the Russian language, and also integrated a chatbot into search results – AI-generated text is now shown before the search results and is accompanied by links to sources.

In February 2023 Yandex announced that it is working on creating its own neural network, which will become an analogue of ChatGPT. It will be called YaLM 2.0 and will become part of Search, the Alice smart speaker, Mail and other services. Yandex launched YandexGPT in May – users can try out the neural network in the “let’s figure it out” mode in the Alice voice assistant. The neural network will help write texts and search for information at the user’s request.

What they said about AI in Russia

The head of Sberbank, German Gref, predicted two scenarios for the development of artificial intelligence. According to the first option, AI will help people work less but earn more. The second scenario assumes that the development of AI, on the contrary, will lead to to the creation of more jobs and labor shortages.

The Chairman of the Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues, Protection of Motherhood and Children of the Russian Orthodox Church, Priest Fyodor Lukyanov, stated that “artificial intelligence with a human face or voice should be banned because of the use of the image and likeness of man and his qualities as a living being.”

Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that despite criticism of artificial intelligence, Russian authorities will continue to develop it. At the same time, he pointed out the need to regulate AI: “As for the point of view of those who talk about the dangers of AI, you know that any medicine, if used incorrectly, turns into poison. As AI expands its presence in the economy and in public life, regulation will be required there as well.”

Popularity of neural networks in Russia

It is difficult to access ChatGPT from Russia, as the service has limited access to users with Russian IP addresses and does not accept Russian phone numbers. However, it is possible to find working instructions on the Internet for circumventing these restrictions.

In general, in 2023 in Russia, the audience of services working with artificial intelligence increased 3.5 times, and their mobile traffic tripled. The most popular neural network in Russia was “Masterpiece,” which Yandex launched in April 2023. The second place in popularity was taken by Kandinsky from Sber. They both provide users with the ability to create visual images from text descriptions. The top three popular services is closed by Mubert, which can generate music upon user request.