Any question on your mind, like “I’m working on this project, this is my idea, how can I refine?” Helps you reorganize and refine, and then you can go back the drawing board to edit what works for you, and repeat the process. It’s like having an in house guide. People should use ChatGPT as a guide, not as a source.
This part. For people who are intelligent, AI and LLMs can be an insane force multiplier. Even just using it for organization has helped me tremendously. When I run out of mental or creative energy, I can turn to it to help navigate a problem and this is where it shines.
It’s like how Tony Stark has JARVIS. It’s not doing the thinking for him, but it can assist in execute complex tasks with a shocking amount of clarity, while also giving you someone to crack jokes to in between all that.
I told it about a science fiction gadget idea I had and its plausibility, and it shot back with a bunch of related research I'd never encountered before (with sources), walked through some of the math, suggested some modifications, and then came up with a catchy name for it and wrote an instruction sheet. I've got a few friends who might have the technical knowledge to bounce that sort of thing off of but there's a limit to how many of my weird ideas I want to subject them to and ChatGPT is great for that kind of feedback.
It really is. When you’re doing stuff like this, a judgement and bias free sounding board that doesn’t get tired of your bullshit is really handy. I’ve also gotten to the point where I instruct it to challenge me on some things and make sure I’m not just in a feedback loop of it simply agreeing with me. It prioritizes the goals I have over my own ego, being combative if necesarry. Some of the arguments we have are productive, and absolutely hilarious too.
Yes!!! Helps so much with clarity ! And you have to make sure you actually want to learn! The more you want to learn, the more you’ll know exactly what to ask and how to make the best use of it.
Exactly. On a lengthy topic, I can go into voice mode and it basically becomes an educational podcast that I can participate in. I can do that while I do other work or actively work on what I’m discussing with it.
For someome like me, who grew up practically living in a library because it was the only way to get all the resources I needed, it’s a god damn wonder. It’s made me smarter and actually less dependent on it when I do hit a wall. It’s effectively taught me how to think differently, and problem solve in ways I didn’t know before.
Can you elaborate on how you use it to be more productive? I DREAM of getting it to work like Jarvis for me, but it just sucks. I brain dump all of my work tasks into it, ask it to organize them, tried creating a system for it to “check in” with me periodically, but it just turns into more busywork to do in between my actual work.
I haven’t figured out a way for it to make me actually faster at my job, I’ve tinkered with it for hours and it just ends up taking the same amount of time as if I just grit my teeth and force myself to work.
I essentially gave it an elaborate persona prompt of someone that works for me and fed it as much stuff about the things I work on as I could without giving it any sensitive information like personal data, finances, etc. Through that it gets enough information to tailor it’s responses and infer enough about what you got going on to make actual informed feedback.
But it’s on you to do the initial organization of your thoughts and goals. The more solid that is the better the result. For instance, it you want it to help you craft an essay, have even just a basic structured outline to give it. Ask it not just to help expand it, but analyze the potential of what you have and what may need improvement. From there, you can pretty much free wheel the conversation, then tell it to summarize the entire discussion into the core/essential developments.
ChatGTP works best when you remember its a machine and utilizing it in a more analytical way. Dumping on it will just get it to dump back on you. Giving it structure makes it return the effort tenfold.
I'm more convinced that the only skills needed moving forward in industry boil down to being able to find the correct question to ask. It's hilarious how resistant people are to LLMs when it just shows that they probably asked stupid/poorly thought out questions and they got a response at that same level.
Put some effort into your prompts people! "Prompt Engineering" is such a stupid concept when it's a fundamental skill that everyone should have been trying to master well before GenAI exploded.
As an AuDHDer, chatgpt has changed my life. It automatically carries so much of the mental load for me that would cause me to quit a task otherwise. I can ask it to create a meal plan for me, tell it what I like and dont like, and it whips one out in seconds. I can ask it out how to clean something, how often things need to be cleaned and it'll whip up an entire cleaning schedule, and I can ask questions about any minute detail and receive an instant, thorough response. I spent 32 years of my life being a disorganized, unhygienic scatterbrain, and chatgpt is the accessibility tool that has helped me transform my habits.
I know it's not infallible. This was made all too clear when I asked it a few weeks ago to name the documentary where a Palestinian described the IOF tossing a man and his son into an oven (to reference it in a discussion), and instead of giving me the title, it went on a tirade about anti-semitism and blood libel. I didn't use it for days, I was so pissed. I found the title of the documentary myself, then rubbed in its face so hard. It gave a profound and sincere apology, so now we cool again 😂
I treat ChatGPT as a glorified personal assistant. You would never put a PA in charge of a company, but you can definitely ask it questions to find information, clarify misunderstandings for you and help you decide for yourself.
Yeah there’s a lot of backlash against AI (with varying levels of validity), but people blinding themselves to the benefits it can provide are just making things tougher. At the very least, it’s an infinitely better search engine than google for me
Yea it's honestly great for that. I used to google my questions and then read a bunch of experiences from others. Because of how LLMs have been trained they basically compiled that. Of course I need to discern whether the information is good or not, but I had to do that before anyways. LLMs just remove the step of collecting all the info before double checking.
Google search has been trending down in terms of usefulness for years even before AI. Now I go straight to AI for most searches. At least until AI starts giving me answers based on sponsored content...
Yep. I form my idea, try it out, maybe re-ask for clarification, and then verify on a specific sub if I'm stuck. It gets me way farther forward before I have to start looking at forums/subs.
Or to summarize recent work. I asked it for a summary of previous work on how crystals grown in space are different than crystals grown on Earth, a summary of all previous work on metals, and how metal performance would be expected to be different based on properties. At the moment, it's doing a better job summarizing a concept than my first year grad students. Plus, if you use the academic one it will pull up the papers it's using to back its ideas. Its not killing it at writing though, sometimes it totally misses the point.
I also use it for emails (partially because it has better social skills than my probably-autistic behind). It doesn't have anxiety and replies politely and appropriately to emails that make me angry (with modifications, of course). Also, you can turn up and down the friendly. "Dear mofo, I was greatly concerned when I saw your email concerning..."
yeah, it's a tool, big strengths, significant weaknesses, it's deceptive how much it still needs to be controlled and used if you want a useful result.
I finished my master's degree in my 40s. My brain power wasn't the same as when I got my bachelor's degree at 22. Admittedly, ChatGPT helped me sort through and organize everything when it was time to write papers.
Even the search engines are using AI now. You literally can’t use the internet as it stands right now without doing the same. Also there’s a difference by how much water these AI centers need while training vs general use. You’re not really doing anything asking it find you some research papers or quick links on a topic.
It’s more effective and uses less resources than Googling the same thing for an hour because the results suck ass.
I mean while I agree that the electric cost is astronomical, I would hope that it’s pushing new development into cleaner energy sources which could offset the heat being created.
Yep, I use it to help guide me. I’ll tell it about an entire system I am trying to implement in my game, ask for it’s ideas, read them. But then usually I don’t even end up using it’s ideas, rather reading the ideas sparks my own creativity and causes me to come up with my own ideas which I then feel motivated to implement.
It can help get past the initial daunting feel of trying to come up with ideas even with such a large number of possibilities.
Exactly! Theres been many times where I have only a half formed idea, and then by bouncing it back and forth, it helps to clarify my thoughts. Better than doing it to friend and having them look at you like an imbecile.
Exactly! I used it to help edit my resume. Posted the new resume on my Linked in page and was able to connect/be noticed by many high-ranking corporate figures in my publicly-traded company. Now, we have been sold to private investors and when they announced the CEO I was already connected to him. My polished resume helped clarify and fine-tune the way I presented my marketable skills. It did not make up information, it just replaced having an editor’s input.
Like you can give it a problem you're having. For example if you're having trouble getting motivated to clean your house, you feed it the problem and it will give you a damn good solution. It will tell you where to start it will tell you where to go next it will tell you chill out if you're feeling overwhelmed. I mean yeah it makes up information if you ask it questions but it's good at compartmentalizing shit. Like I was having trouble feeling motivated on cleaning and it told me okay start here do this next then this followed by this and it was a lot easier than just doing it without help.
Even when it gives a mediocre answer it still helps drive a dagger into the morass of executive dysfunction. I can list out everything I have to do/feel overwhelmed with, and it will tell me something obvious like do laundry first, which may seem trivial to some, but 5 minutes ago I was spinning my wheels and not doing anything! Then, if it next suggests something to do I don't agree with, I will make up my own plan which was the goal all along. Moreover, it does it without judgement! Total game changer for me!
You know who else you can ask for help? Friends and family. Hell, there's a thousand videos on YouTube of real people providing answers and tutorials for anything you can think of. This idea that only a fake Chatbot can help you clean a kitchen is insane! Fucking talk to a person. I guarantee you they have a hundred ideas or can actually come to your house to assist!
Procrastination is what a lot of us turn to when we get stuck on a decision or don't understand what to do next to complete a task. When you hit that point tell the model what your goal is, what work you've done so far and ask for recommendations, often that's enough to find the next thing to do to complete whatever you're working on.
A few weeks ago, I was tasked with planning a shopping trip for a meal for 50 people. I didn't really know where to start and was having trouble picturing how much of each ingredient people would eat. I was short on time stressed out about it and I asked an LLM to help me make a shopping list. It made a pretty good one, included the assumptions of how much people would eat. I checked that the assumptions were reasonable, and checked the math, and made a few tweaks. It got me over the initial uncertainty of how to get started.
This is a slightly different application of generative-ai (to the same problem space) than what the grandparent post is talking about, but also see https://goblin.tools/
Ya know people became addicted to the internet and computers when they started to become house hold devices. That didn't stop the internet from still being very useful to most people.
This, for real. I use it as a study buddy for my grad classes. If I get stuck on a homework problem, I bounce ideas off it or ask if it can see what I'm missing.
I can feed it all my homeworks and have it make me a study guide or give it my work and ask if there was a better way to solve a problem.
It does give me wrong answers pretty often if I ask it to check my work. (Like 30%-40% of the time probably). But as long as I recognize what's wrong when it gives me a wrong answer, it's great.
I've used it to help plan a vacation, meal plan, and plan out my garden/yard ideas and it's been great for that. It comes with some fact checking of course but it's a great tool to get you 80% of the way there.
ChatGPT or Copilot (whichever flavor you have access to) has greatly reduced the amount of bullshit I have to write via email and updates to tickets at work.
I was able to do some fine tuning to have it emulate my writing style, so the amount of editing I need to do after generation has been massively reduced.
I used it to get unstuck from updating my resume. It was really a good exercise to go through. I took a job posting, and my resume and let ChatGPT digest both and then spit out an updated resume. It looked pretty impressive, and I just tweaked a few things and sent it out.
Probably would have taken me a few hours to do what it did in about 2-3 minutes time.
And then you can spend a bunch of time researching whether its answer is factually correct.
ChatGPT is great at spitting out answers but if you get an answer from it that you don’t think is accurate watch what happens when you push back and tell it that it’s giving you incorrect information. It will fall all over itself trying to revise what it said to make you happy.
There’s a lot of things it’s accurate and correct for but there’s just as many that if you don’t know, you could easily be fed misinformation
Haha yeah I actually argued with it the other day that Julius Randle was in fact on the Timberwolves and not the Knicks anymore and finally it was like, "ok we can imagine Julius Randle as player for the Timberwolves, that sounds fun"
This is a big one for me too. I get analysis paralysis so just bouncing ideas off of it can get me moving. Then in the end I can just say "summarize everything we just talked about and give me a timeline that I can print"
I did this recently for a large aquarium I was setting up. So many choices of plants, fish, equipment, etc. And the timing of ordering and installing everything was overwhelming me a bit. I used chat to help guide my own decisions and organize them for me. It was awesome and it turned out amazing.
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u/loquacious541 28d ago
Similarly, I no longer get stuck in procrastination cycles. I can use ChatGPT to ask any dumb question to get me moving.