Demystifying GPT, ChatGPT, Auto-GPT, and ChaosGPT for Management Professionals

Many people, even those working in leading tech companies - from Amazon to Verizon - have told me that they're still confused about GPT, the generative AI model that has been around for years, vs. ChatGPT, the web-based chat app, which took the world by storm when it was launched late last year vs. other variants of *GPT which seem to have been getting attention in recent weeks.

GPT

GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. This software generates text by learning patterns in large amounts of previously processed texts. GPT is pattern-matching software. It doesn't "think," "reason," or "have intelligence." It has processed or been "trained" on large amounts of texts ranging from scientific research papers to social media and more. Based on all this processing or "training," GPT responds to any text prompt with text that mimics intelligence. OpenAI is the company that developed GPT. Version 4, or GPT-4, is the most recent version of GPT.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a free web user interface chatbot created by OpenAI for interacting with GPT. There's also a paid tier of ChatGPT called ChatGPT Plus. Other similar Chatbot interfaces built on GPT or other such Large Language Models (LLMs) are ChatSonic by WriteSonic, Bard by Google, and Bing Chat by Microsoft, among others.

Auto-GPT

Auto-GPT is open-source software that users can install to perform tasks involving GPT to process user requests and interact with the internet. The project's Twitter account and website claim to be the fastest-growing open-source project in the history of Github, the largest repository for open-source projects.

ChaosGPT

ChaosGPT is a name given to a modified instance of Auto-GPT, which one user installed and tasked with the ominous task of destroying humanity. The user posted about this on a video that has had about 280k views since it was posted about a month ago on the ChaosGPT youtube account.