GPT-3: 'Mind-blowing' AI tool can design websites and prescribe medicine

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy The artificial intelligence tool GPT-3 has been causing a stir online, due to its impressive ability to design websites, prescribe medication, and answer questions. The tool comes from OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research lab split into two sections: a for-profit corporation called OpenAI LP, and its non-profit parent organisation OpenAI Inc. Last month, the product was made commercially available, but work still needed to be done to see how the tool should be used. This includes asking “How many eyes does my foot have?”, to which GPT-3 responds, “Your foot has two eyes”, or the question “How many rainbows does it take to jump from Hawaii to seventeen?” to which the program responds “It takes two rainbows to jump from Hawaii to seventeen.” The OpenAI researchers themselves acknowledge this, writing that “GPT-3 samples lose coherence over sufficiently long passages, contradict themselves, and occasionally contain non-sequitur sentences or paragraphs.” Machine learning algorithms such as these do not necessarily “think” or even understand the language they are responding with. “I think the best analogy is with some oil-rich country being able to build a very tall skyscraper,” Guy Van den Broeck, an assistant professor of computer science at UCLA, told VentureBeat.