If You're Not Using ChatGPT, You Need to Get Going Now
ChatGPT can help you plan your child’s birthday party theme and activities.
ChatGPT Part one
If You're Not Using ChatGPT, You Need to Get Going Now
You’ve heard about AI, and probably ChatGPT. And maybe you’ve heard rumours. Like the lawyer who tried to ask an untrained chatGPT some legal questions and got humiliated in the courtroom. Or your friend who asked about famous black poets and got all sorts of fictional characters and biographies. Imaginary products and services, false geography, fabricated history, incorrect medical advice - these are all part of what are known as AI hallucinations, and for many of us, these stories have made the entire phenomenon something to shrug away. Part of you is comfortable enough waiting for the whole thing to blow over.
But I’m here to tell you - it’s not going to blow over. AI is going to take over almost every aspect of your world and if you avoid learning to use it, you’re going to have a hard time catching up in the near future.
So how can it be useful if it’s not trustworthy.
ChatGPT is a large language model. Think of it a bit like a young human. If you ask an outgoing 5 year old a question about the world they will be able to create a great, and imaginary, reply. Because although they are smart, they don’t have the information for a correct answer so they tell you a wonderful story. And that’s the whole thing with ChatGPT. It will only give the right answer if it’s been trained on the material.
Let’s go back to that lawyer. He was asking an untrained AI questions of legal consequence. Of course he got an imaginary answer. However, if he had ‘fed’ his GPT the data it needed to give a correct answer, things would have been different.
Anyone can train a GPT. I recently fed a GPT the entire contents of the Official Rules of Duplicate Bridge as put out by the World Bridge Federation. Then I asked it questions regarding the Law of Duplicate and the GPT was able to answer very accurately. Oh - I also had to tell it to admit to not knowing if there was something it could find and answer to - “Do not make anything up. All your answers must be fact, non-fiction. If you don’t know the answer just say that.” Then I saved the GPT in my GPT library and can go and talk to it whenever I want.
With another GPT, I fed it the web addresses of 5 different comprehensive websites on card games, their rules and their variations. After that, I could ask that GPT how to play any card game and it would give me the rules. I could ask it for card games suitable to 5 year olds, or games that worked well with two players and it would answer - correctly.
But you won’t have to train your GPT
Over the past year, the GPTs have grown up - a lot. Now it’s possible to access GPTs that have been fully trained by people around the world.
Scholar GPT for example, aids your research with 200M+ resources and built-in critical reading skills.
Planty bills itself as Your fun and friendly plant care assistant! Ask me how to best take care of your plants.
GymStreak Workout Creator will automatically create home and & gym workouts
Home Style Advisor analyzes home photos, suggests decor matching style, and uses DALL-E for visual ideas.
And that’s just a few of soon-to-be millions I am sure. People like you and I no longer have to train our chatGPTs if we don’t want to. We can access pre-trained GPTs for what we need.
But what can it do for me?
Most people think chatGPT is about writing - and it truly is great at writing. Articles, letters, ad copy, website copy, instructional material - it’s fantastic! You can specify your reading audience, the age of your readers, the voice you’d like the content to use. You can even train a GPT on your own writing voice so what it writes will sound like you!
Note though, to use chatGPT as a content creator, you’ll need to look for a well trained GPT or you’re going to get a whole lot of flowery language, many adjectives and adverbs, and a lot of directive commands.
But chatGPT is capable of so much more than writing a blog posts and birthday greetings. Here are some examples:
I have a large plant on my deck that was lovely but then suddenly died. So I took a picture of it, uploaded it to the chatGPT on my phone, and asked, “What is this plant and why did it die?” The GPT correctly identified the plant as a Japanese fatsia, and diagnosed that it had died of extreme cold. Darn. I should have put a cover on it during that cold snap!
I had no idea what to make for dinner - so I took a picture of the inside of my fridge and asked GPT what would make a good meal. It gave me some suggestions and then a recipe.
I use paypal for my business and wanted to sort it for yearend. I downloaded all the reports and uploaded them to chat. Then I asked for a list of all income in each currency, all paypal fees in each currency, and I also asked for a mailing list of clients from the last 3 years so I could send out a newsletter. Chat happily provided what I needed, formatted properly.
I’m a gamer and received a copy of Zelda for my birthday. When I’m truly stuck (shrines! grrrr) I might ask chatGPT to tell me how to get out of the shrine, or how to make a fire, or how to ride a horse. It never lets me down!
You can upload pdfs, text files, word docs, photos, spreadsheets - chat can work with everything - do research, reformat, whatever you need.
For the purpose of this article I asked chatGPT to give me 10 examples to things the GPT can do that aren’t related to writing:
Birthday Party ideas Generator helps users brainstorm & organize unforgettable birthday celebrations, suitable for all ages and interests.
Daily Planning and Organization: ChatGPT can help you create and organize your daily schedules, set reminders for important tasks or appointments, and even help you prioritize your activities for the day.
Learning and Education: It can serve as a tutoring aid, providing explanations on a wide range of topics, helping with language learning, or offering detailed insights into historical events, scientific concepts, and more.
Recipe Suggestions and Meal Planning: ChatGPT can assist in meal preparation by suggesting recipes based on the ingredients you have at home, helping with meal planning for the week, and offering nutritional advice.
Travel Planning and Advice: It can provide travel tips, suggest destinations based on your preferences, help you plan your itinerary, and offer advice on the best places to eat, stay, or visit in a given location.
Fitness and Wellness Guidance: ChatGPT can suggest workouts based on your fitness goals and available equipment, offer wellness tips, and provide guidance on meditation and mindfulness practices.
Technical Support and Troubleshooting: It can offer step-by-step troubleshooting advice for common technical problems with electronics, software, and appliances, making it easier to solve issues without needing expert help.
Personal Finance Management: ChatGPT can provide advice on budgeting, saving money, and managing personal finances, including tips on reducing expenses and debt management strategies.
Entertainment Recommendations: It can suggest movies, books, TV shows, or music based on your tastes and preferences, helping you discover new favorites and providing summaries or reviews to guide your choices.
Language Translation and Interpretation: ChatGPT can translate phrases or texts between multiple languages, aiding communication and helping you learn or understand foreign languages better.
Emotional Support and Advice: While not a replacement for professional mental health support, ChatGPT can offer a listening ear, provide general advice on coping with stress, anxiety, or everyday challenges, and suggest resources for further assistance.
Most of this I can already do in other ways
This is so true, and has been true in all instances of technological advance. Before spreadsheets, accountants could use calculators and large blue ledger books. But after spreadsheets, accountants were able to service ten times the number of clients and their work was ten times more accurate. But not only that - after spreadsheets came along, no one used the old tools. After bookkeeping software came along, no one did their books by hand anymore. After the printing press came along, no one printed and illustrated books by hand anymore. After cars came along, covered wagons became a thing of the past. You get where I’m going with this I’m sure. Now that chatGPT and other AI tools are here, the old tools and methods will fade away. There will come a day when the methods you are used to for accomplishing certain tasks will simply not be available anymore.
This is why you need to get on top of this now. AI is in its infancy. Don’t buy into courses - they’ll be outdated shortly. Don’t buy into AI services - they’ll be useless to you shortly. But do learn what you can, play with it, have fun with it. Maybe watch a few You-tubes.
OK, I’m convinced. How do I get started?
I’m happy to hear you’re now more interested in getting to know ChatGPT. To help you along, we’re writing a series of How-To articles. Our next will be “Chat GPT Part 2: How do I get it going?”
