I guess you know by now that I’m excited about artificial intelligence. People will often mention the topic to me when we cross paths. And I often get the same comment: “It sounds interesting but I don’t use it. What do you use it for?”
People, I’m here to tell you I’m a man with questions about every imaginable topic. To me, AI is like a genie that knows everything and is at my beck and call. Every day it seems too good to be true.
People will often respond, “I use Google.” In my mind, there is no comparison. AI’s responses are so much more useful.
I was using ChatGPT even before breakfast this morning. I had just read again about how much energy and water the massive AI data centers use, and how noisy they are—as would be the case with thousands of spinning hard disk drives. I wondered why they didn’t use solid state memory, like in your smartphone.
ChatGPT answered my question in six paragraphs of helpful detail, explaining that both are used. Solid state memory is faster and used for high-demand applications, such as cloud computing. It’s more durable and energy efficient but also more expensive (though the price is coming down). Hard drives are used for long-term storage. Thank you, genie.
Google responded to the same question with a single paragraph that was taken from a blog post—and with its usual list of links.
But ChatGPT is not always my tool of choice when I have a question. By default, it answers using its “large language model.” As we’ve discussed, this is simply a database of billions of words and bits of words. Using the weights that have been assigned to these words and bits in various contexts, it responds to your prompt by putting together the words that are most likely to follow one another in this context.
However, if not much has been written about a specific topic, these AI chatbots can make up stuff. Early on, I asked one “Who is Jim Karpen?” It made up all these accomplishments, most of which were by a person with a somewhat similar name. It simply hadn’t ingested much content about this Jim Karpen.
So when I have question that’s related to something current, or that is very niche, I tend to use Perplexity AI. This AI searches the internet and then uses AI to combine the search results into a single, highly coherent answer.
This is called “retrieval augmented generation,” or RAG. (To define the phrase: It’s generating a response via a large language model, but this generation is augmented by retrieving specific information from the internet.) RAG is now also built into chatbots such as Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot, but Perplexity was based on RAG from its inception and does it better.
Retrieval augmented generation is also available in ChatGPT, and if ChatGPT recognizes that your prompt is about a current event, it will default to RAG using the Bing search engine. For example, in late September as I write this, someone said that Harris is leading Trump in Iowa. I asked ChatGPT to use Bing to see if this was true. It wasn’t.
RAG is also used by many enterprises. They supplement a chatbot with their own content to accomplish specific purposes. I actually have my own RAG chatbot. In ChatGPT, if you click on Explore GPTs at left and search on my name, it will bring up Jim Karpen’s Computer Frontiers Chatbot. Enter a prompt, and it will include content from my columns in its response.
The AI genie is such a wonder. Last night while walking, I saw a man get the attention of the little poodle beside him and then point emphatically toward something on the other side of the soccer field. I wondered if the dog would understand the gesture, since most animals wouldn’t. The dog stared across the field for a moment and suddenly realized its master was over there. It raced across the field and jumped up and down as it greeted its owner.
So heartwarming. As always, I had a question. Do most dogs understand this gesture? I got out my iPhone as I walked, and ChatGPT answered, in part, “Dogs are quite adept at interpreting human gestures, especially pointing.”
In recent days my genie has answered questions about how to use my Oculus virtual reality headset, helped me remember the word “weasel” when I couldn’t think of it, told me that, yes, crickets are used for protein in some processed foods but not in the way suggested in a Facebook post, told me it would be better to feed a friendly chipmunk rolled oats than salted sunflower seeds, helped me learn the correct pronunciation of bonobo, and so much more.
I’m a man with many questions.
Find column archives at JimKarpen.com.