**Disclaimer**
I started this blog post in early February 2023 and since then, it has been shelved for other company updates from the Clevernet files. Add to this, the speed at which ChatGPT and the whole AI arena are evolving, at breakneck speed to say the least. Only last night Italy announced they would be banning ChatGPT so, no doubt this blog will be out of date quicker than a pint of milk left in the sun.
What were your tech breakthroughs and wins in 2022?
The first win from tech was Wordle. Did you join the Wordle craze last year (I did)?
How about Quordle, did you try and master that? Quordle is Wordle on steroids, well times 4 as testing.
My second tech breakthrough in 2022 was ChatGPT (v3) which hit the internet airwaves in November 2023 to a frenzy of hype and chatter.
Full disclosure, neither myself, nor Clevernet are experts in ChatGPT, but this has come up as a point of discussion in multiple customer meetings in Q1 2023.
ChatGPT was created by OpenAPI (Microsoft are investors in OpenAPI) and is described as a “Google killer”. Since then, Google announced their own AI Chatbot called "Bard".
A Time Before ChatGPT
Chatbots have always been an interest of mine and in mid-2020 (slap bang in the middle of the pandemic) I re-sold a chatbot service called Leadoo. Leadoo is a Finnish startup that was going after the UK mainland market, but they did not have any boots on the ground in Ireland and I took it upon myself to do some prospecting. My Ideal Customer Persona (ICP) was digital marketing/web agencies, who could use the chatbot as an upsell to their existing business (website development/SEO etc.) and I built up a pipeline. There are some great use cases for chatbots on websites and I was sold by the value for consumers.
Leadoo went on to raise VC funding in early 2021.
Then there was ChatGPT
Why is this? Well ChatGPT is basically a huge collection of information up to 2021 (V4 is now 'live'), using “AI” which is really machine learning (ML), and you go to a webpage where you ask questions, like:
“Write my history essay on the US War of Independence”, or;
“Write my Disaster Recovery plan for DevOps”, or;
“How do I ask my company for a pay rise?”
Why the hype?
ChatGPT saw 1 million new users within 5 days. Instagram did the same in 2.5 months, Facebook achieved this number in 10 months, Twitter took 24 months and Netflix landed at 1 million in 41 months.
Some educational facilities have blocked access to ChatGPT on campus and I can see why.
You can also ask ChatGPT to write code for you... so it’s not just a career killer for a copy writer like me but those tech developer ninjas too.
ChatGPT will then crunch a load of presumably AWS lambda servers and connected databases of content, to return your results.
At the moment ChatGPT has a freemium model and paid-for subscription option.
ChatGPT & Sustainability
With great computing power comes a lack of sustainability
Version 4 is now live and is rumoured to be 3 times more powerful than the version launched last November. One other point to note about ChatGPT is the cost per query. This is free, for the most part, but someone is paying for the computing power in the Cloud, and from a sustainability point of view, this isn't good news for the environment.
Morgan Stanley recently produced a good piece of work looking at the computing cost to process Google’s search queries on the one hand, and ChatGPT queries on the other: the cost per GOOGL search was about $0.005/search... the cost per ChatGPT3 query was between $0.03 and $0.14. This doesn’t matter when ChatGPT is being used in relatively small scale, but it really matters if ChatGPT were to be used at scale.
Trust But Verify
For years I had incorrectly attributed that quotation to former US President, Ronald Reagan. It is actually an old Russian proverb that was fed to President Reagan by Suzanna Massie, advising Reagan on how the Russians like to talk in proverbs. He adopted this phrase to emphasize "the extensive verification procedures that would enable both sides to monitor compliance with the nuclear disarmament treaty.
I tested ChatGPT for some blogs planned in 2023 and yes, it did return 3-4 paragraphs of competent copy, (without typos :)), but, and this is the BIG but, you need to verify the content to ensure validity and accuracy.
As a history graduate, verifying your sources and listing them using Harvard referencing was drilled into me in decades ago.
Since this section of the blog was written, earlier this week we had various senior statesmen from the online and tech world share an open letter about their concerns around AI and asking for a pause on development.
Chat To Clevernet & Trust Us
Being new to Clevernet and the world of building intelligence/smart buildings and Building Management Systems (BMS), I wanted to conduct my own research and write my own content for our avid readers so I better understand the environment we operate in.
Fortunately, we have a bunch of clever clogs at Clevernet who understand this world infinitely better than me and you can trust what they say.
Don’t take the easy way out; read, research and write your own copy for school or work.
Our promise to you is all our wi-fi audits, energy audits and any report produced will be written by Clevernet staff only and you can trust our recommendations for your business. These will save you money.
What were your tech breakthroughs in 2022? What did we miss?