ChatGPT: A Comprehensive Review on Current Perspectives and Future Directions
Volume: 1 Issue: 01 | Feb-2025
Article | Open Access | Published: 21 February 2025
ChatGPT: A Comprehensive Review on Current Perspectives and Future Directions
Anil Srivastava
Abstract
ChatGPT made it big in a short period. According to numerous reports, it gained immense popularity due to its breakthrough in large language modeling. In the field of AI, it is considered a unique model that also has propelled other technology companies to come up with similar kinds of tools that could solve problems with natural language conversations. This paper presents a brief history of ChatGPT and how it made its name in the field of AI. It also discusses the complex science behind supervised learning, data training, and its functionality, accompanied by a review of existing and growing literature. This article aggregates all available literature on this topic and provides possible solutions that could help with improving the outcome of this large language model. There are also potential challenges that could evolve due to the use of this technology. Therefore, this paper concludes with insights into the existing and future challenges and also provides possible solutions to overcome those problems effectively.
Introduction
ChatGPT is now considered one big language model that has been in use across the globe. It is revolutionary in multiple ways. It is known to be the best in producing the content needed by the users. The users can put their queries in natural language, and it can provide possible answers as per the queries. Creating human-like text was always a big challenge. Tech companies have always tried to do something different. For instance, robots talking in natural language, and working for the benefit of the people were once difficult to imagine but their existence in the present tech-driven world is simply amazing (Wu, 2023). A large language model that could provide content in natural language was something unthought of but the launch of ChatGPT made it a reality. It indeed made AI-human interaction much simpler. Human talking to machines and machines responding to humans were big challenges, but ChatGPT is good enough to overcome this problem. Its performance on various tasks establishes it as one of the leading language models currently designed and developed in the world. It has the potential to transform the way people interact with machines. It simplifies communication (Fitria, 2023).
From the backend, its data is the fuel that generates the results. It is trained on large sets of data across various industries and sectors. No matter what the users ask, it can generate the answer for its users. Or at least respond to the users with human-like intelligence. It can respond to any question no matter how complex it could be. It is smart enough to interpret the queries even if the query entered is wrong or out of structure, with no grammar or proper wording. It is intuitive to respond to anything the users type. It is currently regarded as the most versatile and flexible tool that can assess queries with a real human touch. Its neural architecture is more advanced, and it is designed and developed to provide more engaging, satisfying, and personalized output (Lund, 2023)
ChatGPT is noted to be wonderful in its functioning. It adapts to different types of texts more easily, works as per the preferences set by the users, and converses with the users in their style. The best thing about this large language model is that it is quick on the draw. It can provide answers in a few seconds. Yes, the complexity underlying the query by the user doesn't intimidate it. It can instantly produce the answers which also makes it the most preferred language model to use in almost all types of conversations and searches. But, yes, research-intensive topics or such related queries might take a little more second to generate the output. It takes a few extra seconds when the output involves some kind of computation or a search for sources online (Kalla et al., 2023). To cut it short, the response time depends on the type of query. Simple queries are answered sooner than a user can even expect, and some complex queries might take a few extra seconds. It garnered praise from the media for being the best in delivering more contextual and coherent texts. It can answer in multiple languages which also makes it the most preferred language model. Its ability to respond in multiple languages is one of a kind of feature that makes it a preferred language tool as well. Its applications are numerous. It is known to promote creative writing, copywriting, and content writing. It is used by students academics, professionals, and business experts for various purposes. Finally, its output which comes with a humanized understanding transforms the way people search, find answers, communicate, or interact with the machine in today's fast-transforming digital age.
The development process of ChatGPt involved two major phases: (i) Unsupervised Phase and (ii) Supervised Phase. During unsupervised phases, the language model was trained on large sets of data. The output was of course, not much understandable at this stage but yes, during the second phase of development the tool started joining the content pieces and producing more structured responses to the queries (George and George, 2023). The model is also tested, finetuned, and improved to overcome problems in generating the right output or to do away with the discrepancies, inconsistencies, and errors that might creep into the response. Its ability to decipher the language of the user no matter in which language they type makes it a great tool. It utilizes deep learning processes, methodologies, and techniques to generate responses.
A prototype of ChatGPT first appeared in the market on November 30, 2022, but of course, its use was limited but it became available for the general public from Jan 30, 2023. It can capture human patterns more easily than ever. It is trained on data taken from almost all sources such as books, reviews, articles, human conversations, newspapers, magazines, and nearly all other forms of texts available online and in the world. It covers diverse topics. It has answers to almost all things you may have on your mind. The most significant change that it is recorded to have brought up in the market is the possibility of enabling human-machine interaction (Opara et al., 2023) The output is of high quality, almost always! The model provides an array of answers to a single query by the users which could be difficult to find through search engines.
Data Training
ChatGPT, a product by OpenAI, is a more sophisticated language model that is recorded to be trained on data extracted from as many as 150 billion items. Its history is recent. It dates back to 2018 when it was primarily aimed to assist in completing the next word in the sentence or completing a text more easily with artificial recommendations. It was deemed useful in typing, writing an article, a letter, and conversations on social media, and other channels (Watson and Romic, 2024)
Products by OpenAI
OpenAI perceiving the importance of more accurate output and its spread of usage, released multiple versions of ChatGPT. They are as follows: ChatGPT (GPT-3.5), ChatGPT (GPT-4,) and then ChatGPT (GPT-4 Turbo). But, of course, ChatGPT is not just only product developed by OpenAI. There are other tools too that it has developed and grabbed the attention of global users. For instance, its product, DALL-E, shows great capabilities to generate images from text. Yes, the users describe what they need, and how they want their image to be, and the tool instantly provides the image as output (Shahriar and Hayawi, 2023). Using this tool, the users can design more realistic visuals. Its core ability to generate more realistic images and artistic scenes with the right combination of artificial imagination and intelligence makes it more wonderful too. However, it can edit the image it has produced, modify it as per the instructions of the users, and expand the image well beyond the boundaries of imagination and thinking, but with due focus on coherence, creativity, and the requirements of the users.
Apart from this, Whisper, a powerful automatic speech recognition (ASR), by OpenAI is recorded to be more accurate in transcribing speech into the desired language of the users (Yanev, 2023) It works well, understands different kinds of accents, and produces the output that matches the queries. It can translate spoken content into a language of your choice, from English to Arabic or Arabic to any other language. It is open source and is available for the people to use and research.
Diversity in Texts
ChatGPt covers a large number of texts, covers a wide range of subjects which include but are not just limited to STEM, Match, Physics, Computer Science AI, Big Data, Machine Learning, Humanities, Social Sciences, Literature, Business, Management, Innovation, Technology or anything (Patel et al., 2023)
Is ChatGPT always accurate?
No tool claims to be perfect and so is the case with ChatGPT. ChatGPT doesn't claim to be the best in producing more accurate results. It can produce 100% correct and factual content on some topics but on some other topics, it can't. For instance, when users ask questions about a living person, it might produce a small bio, but it might not well define the person. It understands healthcare topics and queries related to various types of topics that come under this domain of healthcare. It can be good in providing clinical insights, but it might not produce relevant content on the research topics. Ray (2023) argues that it is not good enough to rely on for advanced research in the healthcare sector. For research on general topics, technology, literature, and social sciences, it might produce content that could be accurate but in terms of healthcare, it is always good to rely on manual search and traditional research methodologies. Similarly, its use in creative writing is overwhelming. It is predominantly used by learners, naive writers, and expert writers too who want to improve their writing skills or write more extensively without putting more effort into creating novel content. Its ability to turn concepts into stories is amazingly great. It can produce a story on anything you ask. The users only have to provide the concept of the story, and it can come up with a story. If users want to modify a few parts of it or provide suggestions to alter the content, then they can do so with no waste of time. It can mold content, rewrite, and revamp the content in any way the users want that matches their thoughts and ideas (Azaria, 2022)
ChatGPT for coders
Coding is a big task. It is not everyone's cup of tea. Software programmers, web developers, and web application developers know that a small error in coding can lead to bigger problems. Therefore, they code, recode, and test the code before the release of the product. With the introduction of this amazing tool, ChatGPT, coding has moved to new levels of excellence and ease (Kashefi and Mukerji, 2023). Now, programmers, and coders find it easy to code. The developers need to provide queries in their natural language, and it can produce the code. For instance, it can provide guidance on how to code an application for loan management, how to develop an e-commerce site, or anything that is needed.
A study on ChatGPt and its effectiveness in generating code by Zambrano et al, (2023) shows that it is good to analyze the code and produce the code for smaller applications but for bigger projects or ideas it could only be used as a guide. The code it can produce to develop business applications or modules in human resources, customer relationship management, e-learning, gaming applications, antivirus applications, chatbots, IoT devices, and applications may not be accurate or should be used with due diligence and human intelligence.
Is ChatGPT a reliable language model?
ChatGPT is reliable when it comes to general knowledge. If it is asked who is the first president of the USA then it can deliver the correct answer as George Washington who served from April 30, 1789, to March 4, 1797. If you ask it what is the only known element that can withstand zero temperature and does not even transform its state, then it can immediately answer it as Hellum. Similarly, questions related to diverse subjects from science to math, engineering, and technology, are answered with no errors. Users can get explanations and summaries on anything they need, an article on any topic for their research project, assistance in correcting the content, improving it, or embellishing it with the right tone and impact (Johnson et al., 2023). However, content produced by ChatGPT needs to be double-checked when it is about a piece of news, a recent debate topic, real-time data, legal advice, medical advice, or content of any other highly specific niche. For instance, a person suffering may ask ChatGPT to get a prescription, but its result is not reliable. It would rather advise the user to consult the doctor. That's a human touch in response.
ChatGPT: Challenges Ahead
Though ChatGPT is evolving, and gaining prominence, it still faces some challenges, and if these challenges are not addressed in the right way or a proper solution is not found then its use may be discontinued. It is used for producing accurate information or information that is not suitable for certain sensitive topics (Adel et al., 2024). By retraining the data, checking data repositories, and improving new output quality this problem can easily be overcome. These are the core disciplines, areas where information should always be accurate to prevent loss or damage in any form. It could generate more factual and accurate information on finance, law, and medicine provided it starts training more factual and verified data taken from trusted resources.
Technical Challenges
Sometimes, it can generate false information (hallucinations). It could generate misleading information. There can be problems associated with the retention of queries or context. It may not remember long details. It struggles when it comes to identifying humor, sarcasm, and other forms of content like criticism, and review (Mosaiyebzadeh et al., 2023). It doesn't pull out the content from the internet sources until or unless the access is explicitly enabled. Data limitations exist too since the output doesn't reflect recent discoveries, changes, situations, or discoveries.
Ethical Concerns
ChatGPT is slammed for being biased in certain cases as well. Because the content it produces is based on the content it is being trained on. Bias in ChatGPT, the AI model may erupt from different sources. There could be many factors. For instance, ChatGPT is based on data taken from sources that themselves contain some form of bias. These biases come from different human perspectives, different historical sources, or societal trends. Algorithmic bias occurs when the machines start processing and interpreting the data that shows biases. Apart from this the tool is designed and developed to generate responses that are universal and align with ethical guidelines which might seem others biased but this is done to avoid controversy or harm of any kind. It will provide dominant perspectives, and it may not show minority perspectives. Sometimes, bias is encrypted while balancing the response (Stahl and Eke, 2024).
User Experience
It is good to decipher the text and the input by the users. But not all the time does this happen. It is noted to lack personalization in answers. It sometimes doesn't fully adapt to the user requirements. When interactions are long, it doesn't fully remember the conversation. It is reported to be a little slow in handling ambiguous queries and struggles a little when the users do not provide queries correctly. Moreover, it can't recall past conversations until or unless the conversations are stored (Xu et al., 2023).
Future Ahead
ChatGPT is still far from generating true, impactful human-like intelligence. It doesn't express emotions or true human feelings. But, the majority of these challenges could be resolved. By implementing fact-checking parameters, methodologies, and procedures, it could be easy to overcome the problem of infrequent production of false information. ChatGPT can respond by integrating real-time data from the internet. It can implement retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to extract the information for the users. The information if trusted and verified then it will help produce facts in the right. It could provide multiple answers to a single query and ask users which could be the best fit which will help with dealing with the false responses (Aljanabi, 2023). It could work on the memory capabilities to improve conversation with the users. It could integrate session-aware AI to remember long conversations and provide more accurate responses. More importantly, it can continue updating data training methods and procedures to resolve problems that occur due to outdated data training methods. To overcome bias in responses, it can start producing diverse datasets aligning with cultural, political, gender, and general biases (Liu et al., 2023). User feedback loops can be added to the conversation to allow the users to flag whether the content is appropriate or inappropriate. This will help fight misinformation and bias.
Conclusion
ChatGPT has emerged as one of the most capable AI language models with the power to empower human-machine conversation. Though it has several challenges in the form of infrequent misinformation, biases, technical limitations, and ethical concerns, it is good enough to provide a better user experience. The tool can overcome all these challenges possibly with more advanced data training and a combination of evolving AI techniques. It can continue to generate more ethical, reliable, and accurate content that aligns with human feelings, values, perspectives, and innovation. Its benefits truly outweigh the risks and it is deemed to grow in the future provided it overcomes the existing challenges.
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