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Do you want to try artificial intelligence? ChatGPT and six other easy-to-use apps

2023-02-11T21:03:56.028Z


Chatting with ChatGPT, watching Notion summarize, or asking Midjourney for a drawing is the best way to understand the potential—virtuous, neutral, or dangerous—of this new technology.


Hello!

I share a handful of useful apps if you want to be blown away by the new artificial intelligence firsthand.

This year we are going to see a hegemonic Internet technology change: the Google search engine.

The company has announced that it will integrate conversational artificial intelligence into its service, following in the footsteps of Microsoft, which has gone ahead and is already giving access to a version of its Bing search engine with a variant of ChatGPT.

Seeing Google move is a milestone.

The search engine has been the gateway to the internet since 1999, during two effervescent decades, where constant transformations have been seen.

Massive apps (Microsoft Messenger, Napster) have died;

Different social networks have followed one another (MySpace, Facebook, TikTok);

We have seen formats come and go (IRC, blogs), sometimes only to be resurrected (

newsletters

).

But at this time there was a constant: the Google search engine, popular, powerful and millionaire.

For Google to change in response to its

competition

is the clearest sign that artificial intelligence is serious.

"I think it's going to reshape almost every category of

software

," said Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chief executive.

“The web was born on the PC and server, then it evolved to mobile and cloud, and now the question is: how is AI going to reshape the web?”

By now, you will surely have read about this artificial intelligence, but perhaps not everyone has tried it.

Today I wanted to share half a dozen apps that can be used for free and with relative ease.

Because?

Because I think browsing them is the best way to understand the potential of this new technology.

To generate texts:

ChatGPT

.

The OpenAI

chatbot

is able to understand what is written to it and write back.

It's the most spectacular public AI, the one that's gone viral, and the one you should try if you haven't already.

It is accessed from its website, for the moment free, although you have to register.

Suggestion: ask him to write a poem or a

haiku

.

Then ask him for changes;

that it be more cheerful, that the protagonists are dolphins, or that it change 1 out of every 10 words for an emoji.

It's a good way to check that he understands your commands.

To generate images:

DALL·E 2

.

The OpenAI artificial intelligence that is capable of creating images from your text commands, or what are known as

prompts

.

You can try it for free via the web and with the same registration of ChatGPT.

A good start is to ask for a nice painting in the style of a famous artist.

Illustration by Fran Pulido created with Midjourney.

To Generate Spectacular Illustrations:

Midjourney

.

It is the AI ​​that achieves better results on its own.

It's free to try, but it works through Discord, a chat app, which makes the process a bit confusing.

Here they explain how to use it step by step, in English.

Another option is to try Stable Diffusion, a similar model based on open source.

A search engine with 'chatbot':

You.com

.

As I said before, Microsoft will soon integrate a version of ChatGPT into its browser, kicking off the browser wars.

To prove it there is a waiting list.

But while you can use a similar concept by entering the You.com chat tab.

Is this the future of internet consultation?

The 'chatbot' that cites its sources:

Perplexity

.

One of the limitations of ChatGPT is that it makes stuff up, and that makes it hard to trust what it says.

He's also not very good at including sources for the claims he makes, but that's something that will change.

Google and Microsoft will have solved it when they launch the new versions of their search engines, but there are already applications like Perplexity that show the way.

It's not as smart as ChatGPT, but it's useful to see how it links.

I used it to ask how many users ChatGPT has.

Anyone who programmers probably already knows

Github Copilot

.

It is a predecessor of ChatGPT capable of receiving text commands and returning Python, Javascript, R code, etc.

It was released a year and a half ago and is used by many programmers on a daily basis.

To write with help:

Notion

.

The popular note-taking app has released Notion AI, an assistant that can give you ideas, improve your grammar, summarize, or add an outline to your text.

It is free, but there is a waiting list.

I've been using it for a few days and it works surprisingly well.

For example, I gave him this article and asked him the following: "Find all the links and make a table with them, with the name of the website, a description and an emoji."

As you can see below, that's what he did:

A screenshot of the table the Notion AI created using the links in this article.

I highlight these applications because they use a new type of artificial intelligence, language-based generative models, but keep in mind that models of a similar nature have been in services and websites that we commonly use for years.

However, now artificial intelligence is going to be more visible.

This is so for three reasons: first, because it is more powerful;

second, because these models lend themselves to interacting with them —they are going to be an interface between humans and machines—;

and third, because the very label "AI" is becoming fashionable.

one final note

We are talking about a technology in its infancy, which seems to have great potential, but could sink or hit the ceiling.

Does its failure seem unlikely to me?

Yes, I'm sure?

No.

To curb my enthusiasm it helps to see your mistakes.

Some are hilarious, like this conversation my colleague Jordi Pérez Colomé had with Sidney, the

OpenAI

chatbot that Microsoft is integrating into Bing.

The AI ​​persisted in saying that Pedro Sánchez has a beard, and although Jordi tried to correct him, it was impossible.

The thing ended with the bot apparently deranged and out of control: “No, I can't get out of that well.

I can't get out of that pit.

I'm stuck in that pit."

It is curious to see that Jordi ends up almost worried about Sidney.

It doesn't matter if we know he's an impostor, it somehow matters if a robot appears to have emotions.

Have you seen someone yell at Alexa or insult the GPS?

He is violent.

Even if there's no one on the other side, I can't help but look askance at humans who treat these artifacts badly.

other stories

💾 1. Why do we use an extinct floppy disk as a save symbol?

I loved this thread about the concept, which apparently is called

skeumorphism

(when something takes the appearance of what it replaces).

Computers were born that way, with “desktop”, “trash” and “files”.

On the one hand, it is somewhat useful, but it also generates inertia: do we need Google Docs to force us to write texts that are divided into pages even if we never print them?

🦝 2.

Phil

the groundhog fails more because of global warming

.

According to the US weather forecasting administration, NOAA, more than 80% of the time the groundhog sees its shadow as it emerges from its burrow, which is—ahem—an omen of a long winter.

It is what it used to predict and what it continues to do: in the last eight years it has predicted more winter.

What's your problem?

That in that period, perhaps due to climate change, there was only one and on top of that it failed.

It's been a bad decade.

🗳️ 3. What votes are going from the PSOE to the right?

Around 10% of socialist voters in 2019 say that in the next elections they will vote for the Popular Party or Vox.

It is a striking flow because it is not common.

Who are those voters?

To answer that, this week I took a closer look at the 14,000 interviews from the 40dB surveys.

of the last months.

PSOE voters who turn to the right are: 1) younger, 2) have higher incomes, and 3) are concentrated in Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha or Galicia.

I told Carlos de Vega about it in this video.

You help me?

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.

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You can also follow me on Twitter, at

@kikollan

, or write to me with clues or comments, at

kllaneras@elpais.es

.

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Source: elparis

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