— Ch. 1 · Generative Evolution History —
GPT-4.
~5 min read · Ch. 1 of 7
OpenAI introduced the first GPT model in 2018. That initial system was named GPT-1 and published a paper called Improving Language Understanding by Generative Pre-Training. It relied on transformer architecture trained on books. The following year came GPT-2, which generated coherent text with larger capacity. In 2020, GPT-3 arrived with over one hundred times more parameters than its predecessor. This massive leap enabled complex language tasks previously impossible for machines. Developers later improved GPT-3 into version 3.5 to power ChatGPT. Rumors suggest GPT-4 contains 1.76 trillion parameters based on speed estimates by George Hotz. OpenAI released GPT-4V as a multimodal variant capable of processing images alongside text. An early version integrated Microsoft Bing Chat in February 2023. The main release followed in March 2023 within ChatGPT before removal in 2025. Current availability persists through OpenAI's API while newer versions like GPT-4o emerged in May 2024.
Multimodal Capabilities And Applications
A 2023 Nature article reported programmers found GPT-4 useful for coding despite error tendencies. One biophysicist reduced program porting time from days to an hour using the model. Tests showed 5% vulnerability rates against SQL injection attacks compared to 40% for GitHub Copilot in 2021. Context windows expanded to 8,192 or 32,768 tokens unlike previous limits of 4,096 and 2,048. Users could prompt external interfaces via search tags to perform web queries. November 2023 brought GPT-4 Turbo with Vision featuring a 128K context window at lower costs. Healthcare providers received systems analyzing medical records starting April 2023 through Epic Systems partnership. Duolingo Max used the technology to explain mistakes during language learning sessions. Be My Eyes incorporated image recognition to help visually impaired individuals navigate surroundings. Microsoft 365 Copilot launched the 17th of March 2023 supporting Office products and Teams applications. AutoGPT functioned as autonomous agents performing unattended web-based actions based on natural language goals.