Several people keep asking me if spending the $20 it for the Plus version of ChatGPT is worth it?
The quick answer is...YES
First of all, let me clarify something. By paying the $20 monthly fee, you get access to the Plus version of ChatGPT, which uses the GPT-4 model, a more capable version than GPT-3. So, if you are considering upgrading from ChatGPT-3.5 to ChatGPT-4, here’s what you need to know:
OpenAI used way more data to train GPT-4 compared to its predecessor, GTP-3. ChatGPT3 was trained using 175 billion parameters, whereas ChatGPT4 is rumoured to have been trained using more than 1 trillion parameters.
Next, before further comparing the models, I want to clarify that I will be sticking to the core differences between the two versions without taking into account the fact that ChatGPT-4 offers plugins that further enhance its capabilities.
Information synthesis and reasoning
GPT-4 offers improved information synthesis and has greater reasoning capabilities than its previous version. This means that it can understand complex prompts containing multiple tasks. To understand this, we’ll give both models the same riddle that I found online:
Mike is a 31-year-old man from the U.S.A. He’s at a famous museum in France, looking at its most famous painting. However, the artist who made the painting makes Mike think of his favourite cartoon character from his childhood. What is the country of origin of the thing that the cartoon character usually holds in his hand?
Here’s the staggering difference of two outputs:
ChatGPT-4
Based on the information provided, Mike is at the Louvre looking at the Mona Lisa. The artist who created Mona Lisa is Leonardo Da Vinci. The cartoon character that comes to Mike’s mind is Leonardo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as all the turtles are named after famous artists. Leonardo, the turtle, usually holds a pair of ninjato swords in his hands. The origin of the ninjato swords is often associated with Japan, as they are typically used by ninja.
ChatGPT-3.5
Based on the information provided, the riddle suggests that the artist who made the famous painting at the museum in France reminds Mike of his favourite cartoon character from his childhood. To determine the country of origin of the thing that the cartoon character usually holds in his hand, we would need additional information about the cartoon character or the artist. As it stands, the riddle does not provide any direct clues to solve the country of origin.
As you noticed, GPT-3 couldn’t answer it but on the other hand
GPT-4 triangulated all the information we fed it and connected them to reply. Mindblowing!
Text and Image
GPT-4 is multimodal and can understand not only text but also images. That’s a big step from ChatGPT-3, which could only handle text. ChatGPT-4 can recognise the context of an image and describe it. Now, we won’t have to rely solely on words to communicate with this AI language model. It’s exciting because images can convey so much information that words sometimes fall short of expressing. With this new capability, GPT-4 has become even more advanced in understanding human language and context. I must point out, though, that I am unsure if it uses the metadata of the picture or if it actually understands its setting.
Conversation data retention
ChatGPT-3.5
ChatGPT-4
You’ve probably noticed that ChatGPT-3.5 forgets your initial instructions or the background information you have provided when it comes to lengthier conversations. This is because it can retain 3125 only words of context.
On the other hand, GPT-4 provides higher data retention than GPT-3 in a single conversation. Specifically, ChatGPT-4 has been upgraded to recall 25000 words. So this means that if you continue an existing discussion, which is always a must to get better responses, it can recall a more significant amount of context from the dialogue.
In a single conversation, GPT-4 can retain more context allowing for a smoother and more seamless "dialogue".
Conclusion
So, there you have it. The three critical differences between ChatGPT-3.5 and ChatGPT4 make the $20 fee a nominal cost for such a vast upgrade. Of course, it all comes down to how you plan to use ChatGPT. If you are just a casual user that doesn’t want an AI assistant by its side all the time, or the tasks that you want it to help with are not that advanced, then you can stick with the free version. On the contrary, if you want help with more sophisticated tasks, such as creating scenarios or writing code, I find upgrading to the newest model necessary.