Both GPT-4 and GPT-3 have great capabilities in handling your tasks and answering your questions.
But in certain circumstances, one might outperform the other.
That’s what we’re looking into today: Which one of those models should you use?
Let’s go.
An Overview of Both Models
GPT-3.5 is among the first models of ChatGPT. So, if you’re among those who started using ChatGPT from day one, then you’ve probably used it. The GPT-3.5 model rolled out in November 2022.
What are some of its capabilities? It has all the basic capabilities of a generative AI tool: It can read users’ messages, understand them, and generate answers based on what the user has included in their prompt.
I’m sure you understand that GPT-3 is kind of a unimodal technology: It can only work around text.
What of GPT-4? This is one of the latest versions of ChatGPT. It was released in March 2023 as an updated version of GPT-3.5. And this updated model came out as a multimodal technology that is capable of handling tasks related to text and images.
Some of the features of this model include text generation, image processing and generation, and text processing. But its text processing capabilities are way better than those of GPT-3.
Now that you have learned about what each model is, let’s compare them using some features.
GPT-4 vs. GPT-3.5: What’s the Difference?
We’ll use three of the most useful features of AI tools for our comparison here:
- Accuracy
- Context window
- Speed
- Cost
Accuracy
Which is the most accurate model?
Well, given that GPT-4 was trained on much larger amounts of data, it will surely be more accurate.
What does that mean?
GPT-3.5 was trained on around 180 billion parameters, and that’s actually cool. But GPT-4 came with better capabilities because it was trained on about a trillion parameters.
The reason why the amount of the training data affects the effectiveness of these models is that AI models learn to make decisions and generate responses based on the data they have been fed and trained on. Simply, more training data equals more knowledge and accuracy.
GPT-4 has won here.
Context Window
The name says it all, doesn’t it? This is the amount of data that a ChatGPT model can work with within a single message in a conversation.
GPT-3.5 has an input context window of over 15,000 tokens and an output context window of 4,000. We are talking tokens here. How much is that in words? This context window means that GPT-3.5 can accept up to 12,000 words as input and generate about 3,000 words as output.
To make things clear, suppose you gave GPT-3.5 a text document of more than 12,000 words, that’s more than what it can work with, what does that lead to? ChatGPT will only access the first 12,000 words and work with them.
Similarly, if you asked GPT-3.5 to create a blog post of 5,000 words, it can’t do that. It will only generate the first 3,000 words, and you might have to keep asking for more to get the complete article.
How about GPT-4? This model has a context window of 128,000 tokens in input and 4,000 tokens in output. And this translates to its ability to process 96,000 words in input and generate up to 3,000 words in output.
Speed
This is just how fast each model processes the input and generates output.
Here, GPT-3.5 works faster than GPT-4. Why? It can understand your prompt and respond to you within just a few seconds.
GPT-4, on the flipside, takes a longer time to process your prompt and generate a response.
How can an upgraded version be slower than the former version? It’s simply because ChatGPT takes your prompt through a lot of analysis and programmed instructions so that it can understand it properly and generate the right response.
So, in speed, GPT-3.5 wins.
Cost
Which model is more expensive?
GPT-3.5 is accessible on the free version of ChatGPT. So you can access it without paying a penny. This is definitely more pocket-friendly.
On the other hand, GPT-4 is a model that is available only on the Pro version of ChatGPT. So it’s not accessible to those using the free version.
So, which one wins here? GPT-3.5, of course.
Which One Should I Go For?
You have seen how each model compares to the other. Now, how do you choose the one to go for? It depends on what your AI tasks need.
If you want more accurate and updated data, you should use the GPT-4 model as it has been trained on bigger amounts of data.
Additionally, if your tasks involve dealing with a massive amount of text as input, you should use the GPT-4 model. But if you want just more output, you don’t have to use GPT-4 since the input context window was upgraded, but the output context window remains the same.
That’s for GPT-4. What of GPT-3.5? When to use it? You should use GPT-3.5 when you want to get fast responses for free. It’s accessible on your free account.
Which model would you go for?