GPT-3 can converse at a conceptual level, translate language, answer email, perform (some) programming tasks, help with medical diagnoses and, perhaps someday, serve as a therapist. It can write poetry, dialogue and stories with a surprising degree of sophistication, and it is generally good at common sense. — GERD ALTMANN/Pixabay
This year is likely to be remembered for the Covid-19 pandemic and for a significant presidential election, but there is a new contender for the most spectacularly newsworthy happening of 2020: the unveiling of GPT-3.
As a very rough description, think of GPT-3 as giving computers a facility with words that they have had with numbers for a long time, and with images since about 2012.
