10 Unhelpful analogies for understanding Chat-GPT

Chat-GPT—not to be confused with Chap-GTP—is all the rage these days, but how does it work? We spoke to experts in the field and compiled this list of great explanations.

1. Chat-GPT is like a burrito

You have no idea what's inside, but you still enjoy it. You have to cut it open to understand what's inside, but that becomes messy really fast. Pre-heating the burrito is handy, because you only have to put it in the microwave for a short time if you want to eat it in another setting.

2. Chat-GPT is like a soundboard with many many knobs

No mere mortals understand what all these knobs do. At first, these are set to random, but with enough listening to the feedback and turning some random knobs you get the perfect setting for awesome sounds.

3. Chat-GPT is like a huge Excel sheet

There are a lot of rows and columns of data. Someone (who??) created an complicated set of arcane functions working on cells that are the output of a function of another cell. Do we need all of these functions? It works, but it will probably break if you make tiny changes to the file. Can we trust the output? Who knows!

4. Chat-GPT is like a frog

We study its behaviour as a biologist would study an organism. Scientists who don't have access to a lot of funding, have to study smaller organisms, like Drosophilidae. But do their findings really generalize to more "complex" organisms?

5. Chat-GPT is like grandpa

Yes, it sometimes says something sensible, but… please first verify whether what it says makes sense. Can be racist. And not to mention the "catastrophic forgetting" that often happens!

6. Chat-GPT is like extraterrestrial life

They are already among us, and they will enslave the whole human race! We should put all resources and the best scientists to finding solutions, because it's the biggest threat to humanity! Also, we don't understand them..

7. Chat-GPT is like a drunk teenager

Something with pre-drinking and multi-shots..?

8. Chat-GPT is like Gen Z

We boomers will never understand them.. (But they are so cool!)

9. Chat-GPT is like a potato

Some are grown using large-scale agricultural practices, other potatoes are grown organically. You may not realize, but there exist many different types of potatoes! The potato is a very versatile product, as you can make all-kinds of things out of them: mashed potato, fries, vodka, etc.

10. Chat-GPT is like a language model trained on the whole internet

But what is a model..?