Emerging 2023 Project of the Year: OpenAI ChatGPT 3.5

It was a version number heard around the world. On November 30, 2023, the most significant first release of chatGPT was based on GPT 3.5, a non-zero number that would skyrocket artificial intelligence. That's what the 2023 Emerge Project did.

ChatGPT changed everything.

There was no doubt that ChatGPT was the most successful project of the year. Emerge, including other sectors that Decrypt is currently pursuing – biohacking and longevity, quantum computing, space 2.0 and beyond – the software release was critical.

In the year As 2023 draws to a close, it seems that entire industries are already built on ChatGPT, sometimes at risk. The tool—mostly through an application programming interface (API)—is embedded in tens and thousands of companies. Every single tech product has an AI feature in the works if not already released.

It's hard not to describe it in hyperbolic terms.

In less than a year, Chhattisgarh has gone from obscurity, especially the academic system, to a revolution that has shaken the governments of the world and attracted the attention of major enterprises and industries on earth. Proclamations have been issued from the United Nations, international conventions and congressional hearings. There were national restrictions and prohibitions against its use in the government, military and private sector.

Perhaps most obviously, even the people behind the technology are asking for control. ChatGPT and AI are quickly embedding themselves everywhere, threatening some of the smartest minds on the planet.

In May, hundreds of tech and business leaders signed an open letter saying there is a “danger of extinction from AI” and controlling it should be as important as nuclear war and global pandemics.

ChatGPT's fingerprints are everywhere, and as revolutions go, we're just getting started.

What's in a name?

To be sure, it's not a very sexual sign, as project- and product-names suggest, ChatGPT is borderline generic.

“GPT” is an acronym widely used in the field of machine learning, based on the tool called generative pre-trained transform (GPT). And that acronym is only a middle ground for other acronyms the world has to learn quickly, including LLM (large scale linguistic modeling) and NLP (natural language processing).

It wasn't even new.

The first commercially available version of ChatGPT is based on GPT 3, the third generation of technology introduced by OpenAI in 2018. And that technology used generative pre-training in 2010. Launched in 2012, it is an AI model building application.

The “Transformer” piece did not arrive until 2017, thanks to the employees at Google, who proposed it in a research paper. The following year, OpenAI published its own paper, “Improving language understanding through generational pre-training.” For then non-profit OpenAI, the stage was set.

Nothing but numbers.

ChatGPT 3.5 was the first API that software developers could access through OpenAI. ChatGPT 3.5 was the basis for OpenAI's flagship mobile applications for iOS and Android.

When the next big public update to ChatGPT was announced, it didn't have a cool codename like MacOS Leopard or Windows XP. The world was introduced to the device as ChatGPT 3.5 and the subsequent AI model was named ChatGPT 4.

When it was unveiled in March, the world took notice, with the update proving that the global game changer is also a fast-moving juggernaut. OpenAI has made it clear that it is pushing hard ahead. It was so hard, it turned out, that it scared people.

It was GPT-4 that created the first sense of speed for people, set the pace of change, turned a turning point in history into a tidal wave of change. After a popular petition signed by well-known names called for a pause in development, Sam Altman had to assure the world that OpenAI would focus on making ChatGPT 4 better (and safer) instead of jumping ahead to ChatGPT 5.

But last month, to no one's surprise, Altman admitted that ChatGPT 5 is indeed in the works. And we can probably imagine what subsequent versions will be called.

Given the massive impact ChatGPT 3.5 has already had, however, it's impossible to predict what AI will look like in another year.

Edited by Guillermo Jimenez.