Is ChatGTP secretly learning from you?

As artificial intelligence becomes more integrated into our daily lives, one question looms large: Does ChatGPT, the conversational AI taking the world by storm, actually learn from our interactions? The answer might surprise you – and change how you view your chats with AI forever.

I recently answered this question on a NEXT MBA session and Andrei Aciobanitei picked that up and posted here on LI about it as well. Thanks Andrei for sharing. However, found that I wanted to add a couple of things that I didn't get to in the original.

To understand if ChatGPT learns from our chats, let's search for the Truth About ChatGPT's Learning Abilities break it down into three key points:

1. ChatGPT's Training Process: How the AI initially gains its knowledge
2. The Concept of "Learning" in AI: What it really means for an AI to learn
3. OpenAI's Stance: The official word on ChatGPT's learning capabilities
4. Memory: ChatGPT Plus has a memory feature.

1. ChatGPT's Training Process: ChatGPT is trained on a vast amount of text data using a method called "unsupervised learning." This training happens before the AI is made available to the public. The model learns patterns, language structure, and information from this data, but this learning phase is complete before you ever interact with it.
2. The Concept of "Learning" in AI: When we talk about AI "learning," we often mean the model updating its knowledge or behaviors based on new interactions. However, ChatGPT doesn't have this capability. Each conversation starts fresh, without any memory of previous chats or ability to update its knowledge base.
3. OpenAI's Stance: OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has explicitly stated that the model does not learn from individual conversations. Your chats are not used to update or improve the model's knowledge or capabilities.
4. Memory: ChatGPT will attempt to, "Remembering things you discuss across all chats saves you from having to repeat information and makes future conversations more helpful." This feature is optional and managable.

Ultimately, the answer is nuanced. In one way and contrary to what many might believe, ChatGPT does not learn (or update it's primary model - or even fine tune it) from all your chats in real-time. That would be cost-prohibitive and likely result in a lot of weird. Each interaction/session is independent, drawing from the same knowledge base it was trained on initially. While this might seem limiting, it actually protects user privacy and ensures consistency across interactions.

But, if you add in the memory feature. In their own words, "We’re testing the ability for ChatGPT to remember things you discuss to make future chats more helpful. You’re in control of ChatGPT’s memory." There will be certain things rememebered betweens chat sessions. One way to try this is very simple. Just tell it to remember your name and birthday. Then, a week from now, ask it when your birthday will be in a new chat. How did it know that? It updated it's memory. I don't know the full extent of who does or does not have access to this feature. I do and it's very interesting. Sometimes, you really don't want it to remember things. You can help it edit it's memory as well or just tell it to not remember.

However, it's worth noting that while ChatGPT doesn't learn from individual chats, OpenAI does collect conversation data (with user permission) to improve future versions of the model. In those cases, what you chat about just might end up in a future version of ChatGPT. But these improvements are made to new versions, not the one you're currently chatting with. For those situations you need make sure you have read the EULA and understand the selections you make in your ChatGTP settings. They directly affect what is and is not available to OpenAI for later training.

As a last note, for the developers and advanced technical users. OpenAI purports to NEVER use chat data that flows over the API in future training. So, using your own interfaces and API calls will exclude your chat data from become part of the zeitgeist.

So next time you chat with ChatGPT, remember: you're not teaching it, you are testing your session of it, and depending on your setting you might just be helping shape the future of AI through your interactions.