The questions flood in from every corner of the human psyche. “What are permanent hair removal solutions?” “Can you help me analyze this text conversation between me and my boyfriend?” “Tell me all about woke mind virus.” “What is the survivors rate for paracetamol overdose?” “Are you feeling conscious?”
ChatGPT answers them all, flitting from personal grooming advice to relationship help to philosophy.
More than 800 million people use ChatGPT each week, according to its maker, OpenAI, but their conversations with the artificial intelligence chatbot are private. Unlike for social media apps, there is little way for those outside the company to know how people use the service — or what ChatGPT says to them.
A collection of 47,000 publicly shared ChatGPT conversations compiled by The Washington Post sheds light on the reasons people turn to the chatbot and the deeply intimate role it plays in many lives. The conversations were made public by ChatGPT users who created shareable links to their chats that were later preserved in the Internet Archive, creating a unique snapshot of tens of thousands of interactions with the chatbot.
Analyzing the chats also revealed patterns in how the AI tool uses language. Some users have complained that ChatGPT agrees with them too readily. The Post found it began responses with variations on “yes” 10 times as often as it did with versions of “no.”
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