Behind the Tech of ChatGPT

Long Live Learning 1 hour Marie Roelofs

Even after your studies, you will never stop learning. Our lecturers are happy to give you tips on how to deepen your knowledge. Eric Postma, professor Artificial Intelligence, gave a lecture on ChatGPT. This 'writing bot' has caused quite a stir in recent months. Is it a great tool or a dangerous development?

The speaker

prof. dr. Eric Postma
Professor Artificial Intelligence

Eric Postma's research focuses on pattern recognition in humans and machines. He also teaches several courses on AI and regularly gives "down-to-earth" lectures to organisations and industry on the latest developments and impact of AI: "Concerns about AI are often fueled by misconceptions about its current and future abilities".

The ‘hyperintelligence’ of ChatGPT

Some call it a fantastic tool and others see it as a dangerous development. But one thing is clear, ChatGPT developed by OpenAI, has taken many people by surprise in its amazing ability to understand and answer complex questions, conduct dialogues with the user and write clear, consistent and even personal pieces of text. As a result, the AI chatbot has become the talk of the day, and people are debating what its impact will be on our education, work and society as a whole.

Generative AI

Researchers who were already involved in so-called generative AI are less surprised, as they saw the implementation of artificial intelligent language models coming for years now. It was rather a question of when and in what form. One of these researchers is Eric Postma, guest speaker of this lecture. He will explain that concerns about AI are often fueled by misconceptions about its current and future abilities and that these misconceptions arise from a lack of understanding from two sides of the academic spectrum. On the one hand, scholars with a non-technical background do not fully understand the underpinnings of AI. On the other hand, scholars with a technical background do not fully understand the complexity of humans and societal systems.

During this lecture Eric Postma will give you a gentle technical explanation of the inner workings of AI systems such as ChatGPT, highlighting similarities and dissimilarities between artificial and human intelligence.