Being a Large Language Model neural net, ChatGPT cannot by itself do non-trivial computations nor be relied upon to produce correct data. Recent months, however, have seen ChatGPT being linked with Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language to give it a powerful computational capability. In his blog post ChatGPT Gets Its “Wolfram Superpowers”!, Stephen Wolfram uses some examples to explain the current scope of this combined capability and to hint at the revolutionary power of its future potential.
Steve Blank’s blog post Playing With Fire – ChatGPT looks at that combined capability from another perspective. He highlights that not only is ChatGPT good at what is was designed to do but that it is demonstrating emergent behaviours (things it was not designed to do) which were not seen in its smaller-scale predecessors. He points out, also, that ChatGPT is beginning to interact with a variety of other applications through an application programming interface. These applications can be used by ChatGPT to enhace its own capabilities. Conversely, the applications can harness ChatGPT’s capabilities for their separate, third-party purposes. These increasingly complex systems will display emergent properties, ie properties that the individual parts of the system do not have on their own but which emerge when the parts interact as a whole. Some of the emergent properties will occur by design, but it is inevitable that there will be some which cannot be predicted.
We are still some way from artificial general intelligence, but that is the direction of travel and we should be concerned that the continued development of this technology is driven by for-profit companies, venture capitalists and autocratic governments without any means of control.