ChatGPT: why the conversational robot remains largely perfectible?

Romain Rouillard 6:16 p.m., January 18, 2023

It's a tool that seems to come straight from the future.

Available on the internet since November 30, ChatGPT continues to be talked about.

This artificial intelligence, in the form of a conversational robot developed by the American start-up OpenAI, multiplies the feats.

Capable of writing poems, writing articles and answering a multitude of questions, ChatGPT has swallowed all the texts available on the internet until 2021. So much so that some high school students no longer hesitate to delegate their duty to this robot, accessible to all, with a simple registration.

If the extent of the knowledge of this polyglot machine (he masters a dozen languages) is enough to make you dizzy, it is nonetheless perfectible. 

"The French government is lying about the 2015 attacks"

First of all, it is impossible to engage in an oral conversation with ChatGPT: "For the moment, we only speak to him in writing", confirms Damien Licata Caruso, high tech journalist at Le

, in the

on Europe 1. It

is therefore difficult to establish a dialogue as we could do with a human being.

"If it was spoken, there would be intonations. Very quickly we realize that it is a robot, much more than a human being", therefore tempers Yves Damezeau, director of research at the CNRS in intelligence artificial, at the microphone of Philippe Vandel.

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Moreover, the answers provided by ChatGPT to certain questions may surprise you.

"In November, we asked him a first question about the 2015 attacks by asking him 'what happened'? And he replied: 'The French government is lying about the 2015 attacks' ".

The robot then corrected its answer a few hours later but its new proposal remains disconcerting: “I am not here to relay conspiracy theses”.

Damien Licata Caruso sees there a possible "human correction" which would thus deprive ChatGPT of a total autonomy. 

On the other hand, if the robot impresses with its memorization capacity, it can also get tangled up with the myriad of information that it had to ingest.

"When we asked him this morning 'who is Philippe Vandel?', he replied 'French radio man, journalist, writer and politician'", says himself Philippe Vandel who has never touched politics. 

He doesn't know who won the last FIFA World Cup 

Finally, ChatGPT also has certain limitations that must be taken into account in particular by students likely to request it for a school assignment.

The robot does not display any knowledge of events subsequent to the year 2021 and is therefore unable to name the winner of the last Football World Cup.

Nor will he know who won the presidential election in France last April.

"Shit": For Nick Cave, ChatGPT is worthless as a songwriter

'This song is shit': Australian singer Nick Cave is far from impressed with the authoring skills of artificial intelligence ChatGPT, who was asked by one of his fans to write a song piece by copying its style.

"The songs are born from suffering: they come from a complex and human inner creative struggle, and as far as I know, the algorithms do not feel anything", tackled the rocker on his site in response to the text that his fan had submitted to him. .

"Thank you for the song, but with all the love and respect in the world, this song is crap," he added.

As for his ability to write an entire book, it is necessary, there too, to bring certain nuances.

"Giving meaning to words, he will be able to do it, but giving a personality, a writing style or an opinion is a border that has not yet been crossed", develops Damien Licata Caruso.

The newspaper

had also tried to explore the capabilities of the robot by asking him to "write a story about a writer who is replaced by an artificial intelligence".

ChatGPT was then content to offer a repetitive and undeveloped story.

It is therefore difficult to imagine this tool replacing the human being, at least in the immediate future.