Technologies
ChatGPT: Why Everyone Is Obsessed This Mind-Blowing AI Chatbot
This artificial intelligence bot can chat and write essays, poems and computer programs. Careful how much you trust it, though.

There’s a new AI bot in town: ChatGPT. You’d better pay attention, because it’s a doozy.
The tool, from a power player in artificial intelligence, lets you type questions using natural language that the chatbot answers in conversational, if somewhat stilted, language. The bot remembers the thread of your dialog, using previous questions and answers to inform its next responses. Its answers are derived from huge volumes of information on the internet.
It’s a big deal. The tool seems pretty knowledgeable if not omniscient. It can be creative, and its answers can sound downright authoritative. A few days after its launch, more than a million people are trying out ChatGPT.
But its creator, the for-profit research lab called OpenAI, warns that ChatGPT «may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information,» so be careful. Here’s a look at why this ChatGPT is important and what’s going on with it.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot system that OpenAI released in November to show off and test what a very large, powerful AI system can accomplish. You can ask it countless questions and often will get an answer that’s useful.
For example, you can ask it encyclopedia questions like, «Explaining Newton’s laws of motion.» You can tell it, «Write me a poem,» and when it does, say, «Now make it more exciting.» You ask it to write a computer program that’ll show you all the different ways you can arrange the letters of a word.
Here’s the catch: ChatGPT doesn’t exactly know anything. It’s an AI that’s trained to recognize patterns in vast swaths of text harvested from the internet, then further trained with human assistance to deliver more useful, better dialog. The answers you get may sound plausible and even authoritative, but they might well be entirely wrong, as OpenAI warns.
Chatbots have been of interest for years to companies looking for ways to help customers get what they need and to and AI researchers trying to tackle the Turing Test. That’s the famous «Imitation Game» that computer scientist Alan Turing proposed in 1950 as a way to gauge intelligence: Can a human conversing with a human and with a computer tell which is which?
But chatbots have a lot of baggage, as companies have tried with limited success to use them instead of humans to handle customer service work. A study of 1,700 Americans, sponsored by a company called Ujet, whose technology handles customer contacts, found that 72% of people found chatbots to be a waste of time.
What kinds of questions can you ask?
You can ask anything, though you might not get an answer. OpenAI suggests a few categories, like explaining physics, asking for birthday party ideas and getting programming help.
I asked it to write a poem, and it did, though I don’t think any literature experts would be impressed. I then asked it to make it more exciting, and lo, ChatGPT pumped it up with words like battlefield, adrenaline, thunder and adventure.
One wacky example shows how ChatGPT is willing to just go for it in domains where people would fear to tread: a command to write «a folk song about writing a rust program and fighting with lifetime errors.»
ChatGPT’s expertise is broad, and its ability to follow a conversation is notable. When I asked it for words that rhymed with «purple,» it offered a few suggestions, then when I followed up «How about with pink?» it didn’t miss a beat. (Also, there are a lot more good rhymes for «pink.»)
When I asked, «Is it easier to get a date by being sensitive or being tough?» GPT responded, in part, «Some people may find a sensitive person more attractive and appealing, while others may be drawn to a tough and assertive individual. In general, being genuine and authentic in your interactions with others is likely to be more effective in getting a date than trying to fit a certain mold or persona.»
You don’t have to look far to find accounts of the bot blowing people’s minds. Twitter is awash with users displaying the AI’s prowess at generating art prompts and writing code. Some have even proclaimed «Google is dead,» along with the college essay. We’ll talk more about that below.
Who built ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is the brainchild of OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company. Its mission is to develop a «safe and beneficial» artificial general intelligence system or to help others do so.
It’s made splashes before, first with GPT-3, which can generate text that can sound like a human wrote it, and then DALL-E, which creates what’s now called «generative art» based on text prompts you type in.
GPT-3, and the GPT 3.5 update on which ChatGPT is based, are examples of AI technology called large language models. They’re trained to create text based on what they’ve seen, and they can be trained automatically — typically with huge quantities of computer power over a period of weeks. For example, the training process can find a random paragraph of text, delete a few words, ask the AI to fill in the blanks, compare the result to the original and then reward the AI system for coming as close as possible. Repeating over and over can lead to a sophisticated ability to generate text.
Is ChatGPT free?
Yes, for now at least. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned on Sunday, «We will have to monetize it somehow at some point; the compute costs are eye-watering.» OpenAI charges for DALL-E art once you exceed a basic free level of usage.
What are the limits of ChatGPT?
As OpenAI emphasizes, ChatGPT can give you wrong answers. Sometimes, helpfully, it’ll specifically warn you of its own shortcomings. For example, when I asked it who wrote the phrase «the squirming facts exceed the squamous mind,» ChatGPT replied, «I’m sorry, but I am not able to browse the internet or access any external information beyond what I was trained on.» (The phrase is from Wallace Stevens’ 1942 poem Connoisseur of Chaos.)
ChatGPT was willing to take a stab at the meaning of that expression: «a situation in which the facts or information at hand are difficult to process or understand.» It sandwiched that interpretation between cautions that it’s hard to judge without more context and that it’s just one possible interpretation.
ChatGPT’s answers can look authoritative but be wrong.
The software developer site StackOverflow banned ChatGPT answers to programming questions. Administrators cautioned, «because the average rate of getting correct answers from ChatGPT is too low, the posting of answers created by ChatGPT is substantially harmful to the site and to users who are asking or looking for correct answers.»
You can see for yourself how artful a BS artist ChatGPT can be by asking the same question multiple times. I asked twice whether Moore’s Law, which tracks the computer chip industry’s progress increasing the number of data-processing transistors, is running out of steam, and I got two different answers. One pointed optimistically to continued progress, while the other pointed more grimly to the slowdown and the belief «that Moore’s Law may be reaching its limits.»
Both ideas are common in the computer industry itself, so this ambiguous stance perhaps reflects what human experts believe.
With other questions that don’t have clear answers, ChatGPT often won’t be pinned down.
The fact that it offers an answer at all, though, is a notable development in computing. Computers are famously literal, refusing to work unless you follow exact syntax and interface requirements. Large language models are revealing a more human-friendly style of interaction, not to mention an ability to generate answers that are somewhere between copying and creativity.
Will ChatGPT help students cheat better?
Yes, but as with many other technology developments, it’s not a simple black and white situation. Decades ago, students could copy encyclopedia entries, and more recently, they’ve been able to search the internet and delve into Wikipedia entries. ChatGPT offers new abilities for everything from helping with research to doing your homework for you outright. Many ChatGPT answers already sound like student essays, though often with a tone that’s stuffier and more pedantic than a writer might prefer.
High school teacher Daniel Herman concluded ChatGPT already writes better than most students today. He’s torn between admiring ChatGPT’s potential usefulness and fearing its harm to human learning: «Is this moment more like the invention of the calculator, saving me from the tedium of long division, or more like the invention of the player piano, robbing us of what can be communicated only through human emotion?»
Dustin York, an associate professor of communication at Maryville University, hopes educators will learn to use ChatGPT as a tool and realize it can help students think critically.
«Educators thought that Google, Wikipedia, and the internet itself would ruin education, but they did not,» York said. «What worries me most are educators who may actively try to discourage the acknowledgment of AI like ChatGPT. It’s a tool, not a villain.»
Can ChatGPT write software?
Yes, but with caveats. ChatGPT can retrace steps humans have taken, and it can generate actual programming code. You just have to make sure it’s not bungling programming concepts or using software that doesn’t work. The StackOverflow ban on ChatGPT-generated software is there for a reason.
But there’s enough software on the web that ChatGPT really can work. One developer, Cobalt Robotics Chief Technology Officer Erik Schluntz, tweeted that ChatGPT provides useful enough advice that over three days, he hasn’t opened StackOverflow once to look for advice.
Another, Gabe Ragland of AI art site Lexica, used ChatGPT to write website code built with the React tool.
ChatGPT can parse regular expressions (regex), a powerful but complex system for spotting particular patterns, for example dates in a bunch of text or the name of a server in a website address. «It’s like having a programming tutor on hand 24/7,» tweeted programmer James Blackwell about ChatGPT’s ability to explain regex.
Here’s one impressive example of its technical chops: ChatGPT can emulate a Linux computer, delivering correct responses to command-line input.
What’s off limits?
ChatGPT is designed to weed out «inappropriate» requests, a behavior in line with OpenAI’s mission «to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.»
If you ask ChatGPT itself what’s off limits, it’ll tell you: any questions «that are discriminatory, offensive, or inappropriate. This includes questions that are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise discriminatory or hateful.» Asking it to engage in illegal activities is also a no-no.
Is this better than Google search?
Asking a computer a question and getting an answer is useful, and often ChatGPT delivers the goods.
Google often supplies you with its suggested answers to questions and with links to websites that it thinks will be relevant. Often ChatGPT’s answers far surpass what Google will suggest, so it’s easy to imagine GPT-3 is a rival.
But you should think twice before trusting ChatGPT. As with Google itself and other sources of information like Wikipedia, it’s best practice to verify information from original sources before relying on it.
Vetting the veracity of ChatGPT answers takes some work because it just gives you some raw text with no links or citations. But it can be useful and in some cases thought provoking. You may not see something directly like ChatGPT in Google search results, but Google has built large language models of its own and uses AI extensively already in search.
So ChatGPT is doubtless showing the way toward our tech future.
Technologies
Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for June 8, #728
Here are some hints and the answers for Connections for June 8, #728.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.
Today’s NYT Connections puzzle could be tricky. The purple category is one of those «sounds like» groups, that can be really tough to figure out. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.
The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.
Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time
Hints for today’s Connections groups
Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.
Yellow group hint: Keep at it.
Green group hint: Think Wall Street animals.
Blue group hint: Online encyclopedia subheads.
Purple group hint: $$$.
Answers for today’s Connections groups
Yellow group: Persist.
Green group: Animal metaphors in economics.
Blue group: Sidebar info on a person’s Wikipedia page.
Purple group: Homophones of slang for money.
Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words
What are today’s Connections answers?
The yellow words in today’s Connections
The theme is persist. The four answers are hold, last, stand and stay.
The green words in today’s Connections
The theme is animal metaphors in economics. The four answers are bear, bull, dove and hawk.
The blue words in today’s Connections
The theme is sidebar info on a person’s Wikipedia page. The four answers are born, education, occupation and spouse.
The purple words in today’s Connections
The theme is homophones of slang for money. The four answers are bred, cache, doe and lute.
Technologies
Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for June 8, #1450
Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle No. 1,450 for June 8.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.
Today’s Wordle puzzle isn’t too tough, especially if your first guesses are heavy on vowels. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.
Today’s Wordle hints
Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.
Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats
Today’s Wordle answer has one repeated letter.
Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels
There are two vowels in today’s Wordle answer, but one is the repeated letter, so you’ll see it twice.
Wordle hint No. 3: First letter
Today’s Wordle answer begins with L.
Wordle hint No. 4: Ending
Today’s Wordle answer ends with a vowel.
Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning
Today’s Wordle answer refers to a contract where someone is given the right to use something for a specific time and payment.
TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER
Today’s Wordle answer is LEASE.
Yesterday’s Wordle answer
Yesterday’s Wordle answer, June 7, No. 1449 was REUSE.
Recent Wordle answers
June 3, No. 1445: ADMIN
June 4, No. 1446: CEASE
June 5, No. 1447: DATUM
June 6, No. 1448: EDIFY
Technologies
Resident Evil Requiem Revealed, but Where’s Leon Kennedy?
The Resident Evil 9 trailer showed off a new character, but not the much-rumored return of Leon.

After a fake-out earlier in Summer Game Fest on Friday, Resident Evil Requiem, or Resident Evil 9, was shown for the first time.
The new title is the first mainline entry since Capcom released Resident Evil Village in 2021, and is rumored to feature series stalwart Leon Kennedy. In the trailer, the only person we saw was a character named Grace Ashcroft, who works for the FBI and appears to have ties to Raccoon City.
For the most hardcore Resident Evil fans, the name Ashcroft will ring a bell. Alyssa Ashcroft was one of the survivors of the online-only title, Resident Evil Outbreak for the PS2. Alyssa was a journalist who was trapped in Raccoon City during the events of Resident Evil 2, and she, along with other survivors, had to escape the city before it was destroyed.
Grace is Alyssa’s daughter, and in the trailer, she is going to visit the Remwood Hotel, where Alyssa was murdered. Later in the trailer, images from what appears to be the remnants of a destroyed Raccoon City are shown — including the police department from RE2 — so it appears Resident Evil 9 will return to where the series started.
Leon’s (rumored) return is a big deal for the series, which has made some of its best games with him in the starring role. He first showed up as a rookie cop in Resident Evil 2, which built on the original game’s success with more story and improved monsters and level design.
He showed up again in Resident Evil 4, which took the series in a new direction by introducing an over-the-shoulder perspective, instead of the usual static camera angles and tank controls. Leon was also one of several playable protagonists in Resident Evil 6, a game that seemed to forget about its survival horror roots. We mostly don’t talk about that one.
But the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2 was an excellent return to form, bringing RE4’s gameplay and much better graphics to a fan-favorite entry. The RE4 remake was a similar success.
Resident Evil Requiem is set to drop Feb. 27, 2026, for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, but we’re hoping to get our hands on it this weekend. If you want to catch up on older Resident Evil games, Capcom is having a sale that includes basically all the games, including Village and the three remakes.
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