ChatGPT and AIs
Posted: Sat May 13, 2023 7:12 am
I assume this is going viral and people have heard of ChatGPT. I'm a little slow on the uptake, being retired, but I got around to trying it out about a week ago in the context of helping me finish up a few minor points on getting a book ready to publish.
My impression is at a minimum, ChatGPT can be thought of as used as a 'super google search' or a 'semi-expert teacher in almost any field on demand.' That just with casual use a few times. A few things I used it for:
1. Translate a name in cyrillic to find out the full name of who did my book cover.
2. Verify some words I made up with sanskrit roots actually meant what I thought they did - the answer was thankfully yes.
3. mundane grammar checking on a few complex sentences, I'm no English major and I did my own proofreading. I'm not sure it's great at this.
4. Ask for ideas for designing a statue in my book that was supposed to embody an unusual idea. I was dissatisfied with what I had. It gave me several ideas which were okay, but were excellent starting points for adding my own twist and additional details. End result much better.
5. Discuss various symbols I used in the book (lots of symbolism) to see if what I thought they meant was what other people thought they meant etc. These discussions were pretty cool.
6. Recommendations for font pairings given a starting font and a literary genre.
And several other things.
This was superficial use, but unlike any other Chat/language bot, I felt like I was talking to a human level intelligence. Not necessarily conscious, sentient or anything else. But a very smart program and a very useful program.
This is ChatGPT 3.5, which is free. My daughter told me her boyfriend was using ChatGPT 3.5 and 4 to help summarize research papers and other things to get through a huge crush of coursework in senior level computer science. Also, based on her observations, she wants to learn a skill that involves using her hands as well as her mind.
So, any experiences out there? Thoughts?
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Note: I was in computer networking since 1987. When the world wide web began, I told my boss at Bell Communications Research (a descendant of Bell Labs) that this was going to be huge. He didn't see it. I had the advantage of trying to come up with a crude version of it for the Army a few years before. Anyway, my encounter with ChatGPT gives me the same feeling. AI is going to do a lot more in our future than it has been doing.
My impression is at a minimum, ChatGPT can be thought of as used as a 'super google search' or a 'semi-expert teacher in almost any field on demand.' That just with casual use a few times. A few things I used it for:
1. Translate a name in cyrillic to find out the full name of who did my book cover.
2. Verify some words I made up with sanskrit roots actually meant what I thought they did - the answer was thankfully yes.
3. mundane grammar checking on a few complex sentences, I'm no English major and I did my own proofreading. I'm not sure it's great at this.
4. Ask for ideas for designing a statue in my book that was supposed to embody an unusual idea. I was dissatisfied with what I had. It gave me several ideas which were okay, but were excellent starting points for adding my own twist and additional details. End result much better.
5. Discuss various symbols I used in the book (lots of symbolism) to see if what I thought they meant was what other people thought they meant etc. These discussions were pretty cool.
6. Recommendations for font pairings given a starting font and a literary genre.
And several other things.
This was superficial use, but unlike any other Chat/language bot, I felt like I was talking to a human level intelligence. Not necessarily conscious, sentient or anything else. But a very smart program and a very useful program.
This is ChatGPT 3.5, which is free. My daughter told me her boyfriend was using ChatGPT 3.5 and 4 to help summarize research papers and other things to get through a huge crush of coursework in senior level computer science. Also, based on her observations, she wants to learn a skill that involves using her hands as well as her mind.
So, any experiences out there? Thoughts?
----
Note: I was in computer networking since 1987. When the world wide web began, I told my boss at Bell Communications Research (a descendant of Bell Labs) that this was going to be huge. He didn't see it. I had the advantage of trying to come up with a crude version of it for the Army a few years before. Anyway, my encounter with ChatGPT gives me the same feeling. AI is going to do a lot more in our future than it has been doing.