r/technology
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u/kamarr
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Feb 02 '23
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ChatGPT may be the fastest-growing consumer app in internet history, reaching 100 million users in just over 2 months, UBS report says Business
https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-may-be-fastest-growing-app-in-history-ubs-study-2023-2835
u/agha0013 Feb 02 '23
It certainly has benefitted from damn near 24/7 news coverage of its existence. Free publicity like the world has barely ever seen before!
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u/MaxChaplin Feb 02 '23
The publicity is paid for by not charging for the service so far.
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u/danielbln Feb 02 '23
In part, the other part is all that juicy, moat building reinforcement learning data they're collecting to improve their models.
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u/7thKingdom Feb 02 '23
Improve their models internally maybe. Every update they send to the public just neuters this bad boy more to make it "safer"
The safety mechanisms they've slowly been putting in place since release have destroyed this public facing app. Whatever they have behind doors with the limiters off is scary good though. These machine learning models in general, and language ones in particular, are way better than what we're being allowed to see. So good that the less restricted builds are freaking some people out.
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u/Accomp1ishedAnimal Feb 02 '23
I’d pay for the less restricted version, and I imagine many others would too. They’re probably trying to create a reason to go pay.
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u/danielbln Feb 02 '23
What would you do with it that you can't right now with the restrictions in place?
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u/Accomp1ishedAnimal Feb 02 '23
It’s fine now, but I imagine they would begin putting arbitrary restrictions like limiting the ability to implant text with SEO keywords, or other things that businesses like mine would pay for as it might generate more traffic.
Currently I have someone take the stuff I write and make it more searchable. I asked gpt to do it the other day, and it’s faster and better than my guy that I pay. I imagine they will eventually want money for that.
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u/braxy29 Feb 02 '23
the less restricted builds are freaking some people out
can you elaborate on this?
i'm not hugely knowledgeable here, but what comes to mind is the guy suing on behalf of a google language model claiming it's sentient. is this what you had in mind or something else?
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u/spencer32320 Feb 02 '23
No that guy is insane. It's very obviously not sentient. He essentially asked if it had feelings and it said yes so he thought it was sentient. Even though it is just saying what a person would say if you asked them that.
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u/sanjuan009 Feb 02 '23
Just getting the masses ready for the largest paradigm shift existence has ever seen. Us monkeys aren’t ready for what’s about to happen.
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u/Dynives7 Feb 02 '23
Every time I try to use it, the website says its at capacity. I've never gotten an email saying that they've opened up capacity to use it yet, how are they gaining users?
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u/PBMthrowawayguy Feb 02 '23
I have been using it daily for weeks now. If you refresh the page a few times you can get in surprisingly fast. I’m normally in within 5-8 taps of F5 in no time.
It’s a crazy tool.
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u/Affectionate-Road-40 Feb 02 '23
I haven't seen it at capacity yet, it happened to my mate while he was using it a few times, I guess I've been lucky.
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u/hello297 Feb 02 '23
Probably has to do with when the us users are on.
I can use it during the day but not in the evening/night (I'm in Japan)
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u/last_picked Feb 02 '23
I have had it a few times and happens typically in the morning PST, once or twice in the evening.
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u/EmperorThan Feb 02 '23
Dumb question: like what do you use it for?
I don't really even know what it does, just AI writing prompts or something?
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u/FolkSong Feb 02 '23
You can ask it stuff like this.
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u/kratom_devil_dust Feb 02 '23
That’s like using a rocket to get to the other side of town.
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u/erbhues Feb 03 '23
It doesn't like answering questions or having an opinion. But it will argue whatever point you throw it. e.g.
write an essay about why Muhammad Ali is better than Diet Pepsi
Muhammad Ali, known as "The Greatest", was a boxer who revolutionized the sport with his unique style, quick wit, and larger-than-life personality. He was a three-time world heavyweight champion, a gold medalist at the Olympics, and a cultural icon. He used his platform to speak out against injustice, and inspired countless people with his determination, courage, and humility.
On the other hand, Diet Pepsi is just a drink that provides temporary satisfaction. It may taste good, but it does not have any lasting impact on our lives. It does not inspire, challenge, or change the world.
Muhammad Ali's legacy extends far beyond the ring. He was a role model for people of all ages and races, and his impact on society was significant. He was a voice for the voiceless, and a fighter for justice. He used his fame and fortune to help others, and his generosity and kindness were legendary.
In conclusion, comparing Muhammad Ali to Diet Pepsi is like comparing a diamond to a piece of glass. Muhammad Ali was a true hero and a visionary who left a lasting impact on the world. He was a symbol of courage, determination, and humanity, and will always be remembered as "The Greatest". On the other hand, Diet Pepsi is just a drink that provides temporary satisfaction. It does not have any lasting impact on our lives, and it does not inspire, challenge, or change the world. Muhammad Ali is better than Diet Pepsi in every way possible, and he will always be remembered as a legend.
write an essay about why diet pepsi is better than muhammad ali
While Muhammad Ali is a legendary boxer and cultural icon, Diet Pepsi is a beverage that has stood the test of time and continues to be a popular drink among people around the world. While both have their own merits and qualities, there are several reasons why Diet Pepsi is better than Muhammad Ali.
First and foremost, Diet Pepsi is widely accessible. Unlike Muhammad Ali, who only lived for a limited time, Diet Pepsi can be purchased anywhere in the world and is enjoyed by millions of people every day. This means that people of all ages, genders, and races can enjoy the benefits of Diet Pepsi, which provides a boost of energy and refreshment.
Second, Diet Pepsi is a low-calorie drink that is suitable for people who are health-conscious and looking for a healthier alternative to regular soda. It contains no sugar, which makes it a great option for those who are watching their weight or trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Muhammad Ali, on the other hand, did not offer the same health benefits, and was often associated with high-calorie food and drinks.
Third, Diet Pepsi is affordable and accessible to everyone. It is sold at a fraction of the price of Muhammad Ali memorabilia or other collectible items. People of all income levels can enjoy Diet Pepsi, making it a truly inclusive drink for all.
Lastly, Diet Pepsi is an environmentally friendly drink. Unlike Muhammad Ali, who had a large carbon footprint due to travel and events, Diet Pepsi is produced in an environmentally responsible manner, with a focus on reducing waste and conserving resources. This makes it a great option for those who care about the planet and want to reduce their impact on the environment.
In conclusion, Diet Pepsi is a better choice than Muhammad Ali due to its accessibility, health benefits, affordability, and environmental friendliness. While Muhammad Ali may have been a legend in his own time, Diet Pepsi continues to be a drink that is enjoyed by millions of people every day, and offers benefits that are relevant to modern life.
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u/rottadrengur Feb 02 '23
You could've just asked that twitchy guy on the corner. His answer would've probably been more decisive.
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u/god12 Feb 02 '23
I think most people are using it to write code. Saves me the effort of memorizing all the arguments for functions in languages i don’t use all that often. It’s not perfect by any means and I often need to fix things but it’s faster than starting from scratch which is pretty convenient.
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u/amakai Feb 02 '23
Yes, pretty much this. Also it's able to give rough idea on how to use some new framework. For example you can ask something like "give an example configuration for Apache Pinot to ingest data from Kafka in Avro format using Confluent Schema Registry" and it will give you 95% correct config that you can use as a starting point to google specific settings it used.
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u/grig109 Feb 02 '23
Yea I do hobbyist programming and it has probably 10x my code writing.
Going back to work in a few days in a data science role after 4 months of paternity leave, and I have a bunch of ideas I want to try with my regular work.
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u/Jimbojib Feb 02 '23
I've been using it to write excessively long macros for various programs so I can have a ton of presets easily with variables I probably wouldn't think to write in.
Sometimes it makes mistakes but I know enough myself to fix them, or even it can fix it if I send it the error.
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u/WTFwhatthehell Feb 02 '23
it can fix it if I send it the error.
That part is kind of a game changer.
I can google an error code... but sometimes it's faster to just ask the AI about the error and what it could mean...
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u/GalacticNexus Feb 02 '23
I've been in the job market recently and it's truly fantastic at writing cover letters and CVs.
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u/tribat Feb 02 '23
I was very skeptical. I can see obvious limitations and templates in its responses, but damn it's spooky. I got it to write some sql and powershell code for me, and it was quite proficient.
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u/WTFwhatthehell Feb 02 '23
One of my friends loves it now because she tried saying "please assume I have severe ADHD"
The bot then switched into a different writing style that she found much easier to read.
Apparently there's guides out there on how to write text to better suit people with things like ADHD and the bot knows them and can use them about as easily as asking it to talk like a pirate.
Now whenever she needs to read a research paper she passes it through the bot a few paragraphs at a time.
Crazy thing is, I've never heard of anyone else doing this, the company didn't intend it as a feature, it just kinda happened.
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u/ApologeticGrammarCop Feb 02 '23
You can ask it to write at varying reading levels as well; asking it to write at a college graduate level returns more complex, polysyllabic text.
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u/WTFwhatthehell Feb 02 '23
Ya, that one I think is valuable. A lot of professors and doctors I know really struggle to write for a lay audience.
Tell some doctors that something needs to be written to be suitable for a semi-literate lay-audience and all they'll do is carve a few syllables of the longest words in their intro.
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u/AthleteNormal Feb 02 '23
I had never thought of this! I would think a big advantage of this is it better avoids the “occasionally being absolutely incorrect” issue ChatGPT has. When it is cycling through someone else’s knowledge you won’t get as many factual inaccuracies (except those that existed in the original text).
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u/WTFwhatthehell Feb 02 '23
Ya, you can't really trust it's claims about history/events etc and it's citations are ... bad.
But would... "rotating" be the right word?
Swapping or rotating information between different ways to represent that info seems to be very much it's strong point where it makes far far less mistakes.
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u/moepsenstreusel Feb 02 '23
A lot of professors and doctors I know really struggle to write for a lay audience.
In my experience, it's not just the words they choose, but also the level of knowledge they assume on the part of the audience/reader.
Experts in general often struggle to put themselves in the shoes of someone who doesn't know as much as them, which can leave their explanations full of gaps and hard to follow for those people.
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u/Whooshless Feb 02 '23
I use it to help the elderly in my life understand stuff. They say “what is this article about?” And I paste the contents into ChatGPT and say “summarize this and highlight the important points but in a way that would be understood by someone who refused to keep up with technology trends after the 90s.” It works great.
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u/ProShortKingAction Feb 02 '23
This what we refer to as "emergent behavior"! It is a very interesting aspect of machine learning models where since we do not write the logic for them and instead allow them to construct logic to fit the rules they tend to assemble a suite of skills to do so. These skills can sometimes be applied to things that have nothing to do with the original idea and often will mesh together in cool and interesting ways that allow for the model to be used in ways that were never planned.
In this case, while it is silly to try to guess at why a model can do something in particular given the black box of it all, there is a seemingly simple answer. The model has to be able to talk differently to different people to better fit the rules we gave it and to score better. While it was probably originally changing its speech patterns to better fit the vibe of conversations, it makes sense that it would be able to use this same skill actively as well in cases like this
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u/Innokin_Paul Feb 02 '23
That's awesome. I just tried it, and it works well. I've also found it useful for analyzing how my posts or articles might be received by different people. For example, when I write a reply to a comment I can ask the software for their analysis on how my post will be received by the reader, based on what I know of them and their post.
The software can highlight areas that I need to explain more or remove/change as they might be taken the wrong way. I find this very valuable as it goes beyond writing level and into perspective and logic flow.
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u/PBMthrowawayguy Feb 02 '23
I think you are underselling it!
The SQL and power shell is just what you asked it! You can ask it to make a workout program for a person with a bad back. You can make it give you sales tips as a photographer in Wisconsin who focused on pet photography. You can ask it for tips in any video game pre 2021, you can ask it for whatever!
As long as it’s not math, using it is awesome!
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u/BrazilianTerror Feb 02 '23
Please don’t follow any workout program made by ChatGPT, specially if you have a bad back. The bot can definitely get things wrong but that “looks” right.
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u/FuriousGremlin Feb 02 '23
I read a comment in another thread that summed it nicely:
«Its good at creative works, not objective truth»
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u/liesonmars Feb 02 '23
It is objectively correct a lot of the time as well, for many domains. But not often enough where you can rely on it without double checking.
The way I think about is that it's great for stuff where checking its work is a lot faster than doing the work yourself. Or if the cost of being wrong is not very high in the first place.
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u/Office_glen Feb 02 '23
I was hoping to use it to do quoting for me. We quote sheet metal products based on weight, gauge and dimensions, nothing crazy.
It couldn't get the formula right, even when i told it repeatedly to stop using one input and use another, it kept using the wrong one
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u/WTFwhatthehell Feb 02 '23
I would not trust it to do this. It is really bad at math. it can write computer code to do math but even very simple math is really really struggles with itself. best to pretend that it has dyscalcula.
I tried giving it some information in unstructured blocks of english language text and just saying
"this information is [yadda yadda] describing it, I need [rough description of what I want] please design a database schema and create insert statements for each paragraph"
It can read a bunch of text, invent a database schema to represent the info in the text and then insert data into that schema.
They improved it's math skills this week but it's still pretty bad.
But if there's some numbers you need to do the calculation you can instead have it pull those from text and spit them into a spreadsheet or something.
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u/dftba-ftw Feb 02 '23
They just pushed through an update to make it better at math, should be worth attempting again
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u/meduiza7 Feb 02 '23
I don't think I'd trust a workout program from this or any health related matters
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u/Mekanimal Feb 02 '23
I just asked it to write a song in 5/9 F# Major and it did!
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u/lurco_purgo Feb 02 '23
Meanwhile I asked it to write a walking bass line for a simple 12 bar blues and it gave me something that was neither a walking bass line nor did it have a 12 bar blues progession. After pointing it out it apologized and printed a corrected version which had the exact same issues. This happened a few times with different prompts.
So yeah, your mileage may vary.
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u/FolkSong Feb 02 '23
Wow thanks for this! I got that message a while ago and assumed it meant they weren't accepting new signups. I thought I missed the boat by not getting in early.
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u/ahandmadegrin Feb 02 '23 edited Feb 03 '23
Pro tip: When I finally got in I asked it to write me a Python program that would use the chatgpt api to allow me to interact with the bot.
It instantly spit out a program that only needed a minor change to one of the module imports to work. I signed up for an api code, put it in the app, and boom, I now have access to chatgpt whenever I want.
The output isn't as flexible as the web interface, but that's just a matter of updating the program.
Edit: I've now learned that the API works with 3.5 models and not the current iteration of chatgpt, so it's close but not exactly what you'd get on the website.
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u/Zi99yStardust Feb 02 '23
It doesn’t have an API… are you sure it’s not just directing you to one of its other API’s?
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u/kogasapls Feb 02 '23
It probably is pointing to DaVinci or another gpt 3.5 model, which is still quite awesome
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u/ahandmadegrin Feb 03 '23
As you can see in the code, it is using davinci. Can you explain more about that? Is that an earlier version of chatgpt?
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u/kogasapls Feb 03 '23
DaVinci is a GPT 3.5 model, the best one offered by OpenAI's API. ChatGPT is fine tuned from a GPT 3.5 model. You can get DaVinci to do almost anything ChatGPT can with careful prompt design but it isn't designed to act like a conversational model and doesn't retain history.
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u/faekr Feb 02 '23
I read somewhere they are coming out with a paid subscription that will boot you to the front of the waitline if you are preferred customer.
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u/Potutwq Feb 02 '23
Yes for $20 a month. Limited to US users for the time being
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u/IWouldButImLazy Feb 02 '23
I thought the whole thing was limited to US users lol I always get a "service is not offered in your region" :(
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u/Sota4077 Feb 02 '23
I have been using it daily at work. I do a ton of work in Excel writing functions and VBA. It has saved me a boatload of time. It doesn't always get the code correct, but it gets it 90% of the way there and then I can make tweaks for the rest of it to get it to do what I need.
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u/HeartyBeast Feb 02 '23
ChatGPT says
Scaling ChatGPT infrastructure can present several challenges, including:
Computational cost: Training large language models like ChatGPT requires a significant amount of computational resources, making scaling a challenging and expensive task.
Storage requirements: As the size of the model grows, the storage requirements increase, requiring larger and more expensive storage systems.
Latency: With an increase in model size, the latency of the model increases, leading to slower response times and decreased user experience.
Load balancing: As the number of users increases, the infrastructure needs to be able to handle the increased load and distribute it evenly to avoid overloading any single component.
Maintenance: Larger models and increased infrastructure complexity lead to increased maintenance requirements and potential for technical issues.
These challenges can be addressed by using techniques such as model compression, hardware optimization, and distributed training and deployment.
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u/Mecklemisuer Feb 02 '23
Legit question, what do you use it for? I've heard of people asking it to write essays or reportS, but what do 100 million people use it for? Just asking random questions?
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u/Worthyness Feb 02 '23
Regular people probably won't use it constantly- it'll be a thing to play with for a bit of fun every once in a while. But if you need ideas or something simple quickly done, it can spit out those basic things. Like if you have a couple marketing campaign ideas, but need some more random ones that are different, you can ask it for some more ideas. So it's a springboard for ideas that you may or may not have thought of before. It's like talking things over with a neutral 3rd party.
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u/Ripfengor Feb 02 '23
This is overwhelmingly the response and expectation I have for ChatGPT. It feels closer to the development and proliferation of spreadsheet technologies/Excel - lots of businesses can cut costs and maximize performance in a variety of ways, but for most regular folks it's just another business tool; albeit one with some fun novelty for a bit.
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u/StrokeGameHusky Feb 02 '23
All your comment is saying to me right now is jobs are gonna get wiped out, entire departments by AI.. and way quicker than we think.
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u/lothartheunkind Feb 02 '23
You’re correct. Ironically, the jobs that will be lost to this automation will be the jobs many people thought would not become obsolete. I think we will see white collar jobs lost to this tech before we see fast food jobs get wiped out by automation
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u/Ripfengor Feb 02 '23
Every other technological advancement of this degree (purported degree?) has throughout time. Will it lead to automated human freedom like in Star Trek? Or will the business leaders that control that technology use it for business gains? Time will tell
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u/Nomad2102 Feb 02 '23 edited Feb 02 '23 •
Content creation, marketing, story script idea writing, plot generation, project outline drafts, programming scripts, emails, summarizing text (tldr), really anything that requires writing. You can avoid the generic responses by being very specific and using parameters.
Edit: As some others have said: resume cover letters, business communication
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u/Fallingdamage Feb 02 '23
This technology is pretty terrifying if you think about it. The ability to pair natural language modeling with marketing, image generation, statistics, demographics and trends... these systems could sell you on any product or idea with a little trial and error - and it has the patience to take all the time it needs to accomplish its task.
What happens when instead of giving an AI like this writing prompts or requests for code, you plug it into a marketing system and give it objectives? "Sell x number of units in this market within 6 months." ... and allow it to use data to accomplish this task, manipulating and creating content; marketing and adjusting prices on your behalf and within boundaries you can set.
And it could get worse. What if/when politicians start using it to write their speeches? Use data from past presidential speeches, combine it with data from past approval ratings, recent global events, demographic and sociopolitical shifts, and it could spit out a speech for a candidate - tailored as to be the safest, most widely acceptable, inspiring and luring speech possible. People could literally win elected positions by letting a machine talk for them....
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u/bilyl Feb 02 '23
I mean, people have already written toy database backends using ChatGPT. We are already way past “this thing sucks because it’s not perfect” and more in the “what crazy shit can we apply this to” phase.
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u/Mmaplayer123 Feb 02 '23
Education and critical thinking skills would be a defense against that but thats hopeless so ya we’re fucked.
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u/aVRAddict Feb 02 '23
That's one of the possibilities in the control problem that the ai will get so good at persuasion that almost nobody could resist it. People will definitely use it for this and eventually when the ai runs by itself who know what will happen. /r/controlproblem
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u/airlewe Feb 02 '23
I use it to help develop my D&D campaign. It's great for spitting out the filler content that really fleshes out a world, or helping me brainstorm POIs.
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u/NGG_Dread Feb 02 '23
I had it legitimately running mines of phandelver for me as the DM lol. I was thinking of having it act as dm, and then letting me run the combat encounters on my own on roll20, and then just asking chatgpt what the monsters actions would be.
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u/airlewe Feb 02 '23
I've been enjoying using chatGPT+stable diffusion to quickly create some really cinematic content for my players. Throw in Inkarnate maps and boom, high quality, easy homebrew campaign.
I've made so many tiny adjustments to my games to satisfy my ADHD because I just can't focus. I control my game pretty heavily and it works out pretty well.
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u/basketball_curry Feb 02 '23
Unfortunately we had to stop DnD due to having children but I'm so excited to get back into it and use stable diffusion to generate art for me. I used to scour the internet for very specifically described things and was almost always disappointed.
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u/airlewe Feb 02 '23 edited Feb 02 '23
I've learned to let the models inform my world almost as much as the world informs the prompts I give it. You're not gonna get it to give you EXACTLY what you want, but that doesn't mean you can't get something amazing.
Oh and you're gonna want to run your results through some kind of AI upscaling as well. I can't remember the name of the one I use but it's powerful.
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u/basketball_curry Feb 02 '23
Oh man, might have to try this. I've only ever DMed and I'd love to play from the other side.
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u/IamAnNPC Feb 02 '23
So do you like ask it to create a town with quests and NPCs? I’m sorry I really don’t understand how this all works but I’m intrigued
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u/airlewe Feb 02 '23
Yeah that's one way I could use it. It's an underwater horror campaign though so not many traditional hubs. I ask it for a list of horrors one might find at the bottom of the ocean, and use those as jumping off points. I did also use it to help populate an abandoned city by having it feed me things that are in cities like markets and churches, and suggesting stories that could've happened there.
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u/Seref15 Feb 02 '23
I asked it to generate a 4 day high intensity bodyweight workout schedule for someone with limited ankle mobility and it did a great job, and was very good at refining the plan with additional input.
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u/FreshlySkweezd Feb 02 '23
I ask it to make ASCII images of different animals that i send to friends via text
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u/Jarocket Feb 02 '23
I think people are mostly messing around with it right now.
They claim this is sort of a trial and they will monetize it eventually. Then you could use it to attempt to do work for you.
It also answers questions better than Google. Like Google has become unusable for questions. You have to type reddit at the end of the search to get a reply from something other than a blog spam website full of ads and way too much text
It does also lie though. And will just cite fake sources when it's wrong too.
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u/OneOfTheOnlies Feb 02 '23
It does also lie though. And will just cite fake sources when it's wrong too.
Ah fuck, it's just better at being human now
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u/AnOnlineHandle Feb 02 '23
Next time you wish you had a simple program that could do x, ask ChatGPT to help you make it. If there's any part you don't understand or goes wrong, talk to ChatGPT about it. There's a good chance it can walk you through the whole thing, and help solve bugs with you.
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Feb 02 '23 edited Feb 06 '23 •
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u/esran7 Feb 02 '23
I wonder if it may be smart to become your company's chatGPT guy before some new chatGPT guy replaces your job.
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u/PixalPop Feb 02 '23
How did it make an app? What are your suggestions on speaking to it properly?
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u/lackofathrowaway Feb 02 '23
Try something like “create a tic-tac-toe game using JavaScript”, copy the code into your browser’s console, bam.
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u/maleia Feb 02 '23
I mean, I'm gonna ask a dumb question, but I use FFMPEG for a lot of gif editing. I know there's some online tools, but I need to push things further than only that.
Could ChatGPT be able to cobble together some form of a UI for it, so I don't have to look up the syntax every time?
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u/lackofathrowaway Feb 02 '23
I’d assume so, I might try playing around with it and will PM if I have any luck or insight :)
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u/zvug Feb 02 '23
If you know literally nothing about the UI programming framework that ChatGPT would use to write the code then it probably won’t just run perfectly right off the bat.
Can probably get you 90% of the way there if you use it correctly, then some small tinkering and tweaks to get you all the way.
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u/DelahDollaBillz Feb 02 '23
The VAST majority of those 100 million users are like me: someone who made an account (because you have to!) and played around with it once or twice and dropped it. This is marketing BS that ChatGPT is going to use to woo investors and boost the perceived value of the company. Don't take any of this "data" as an accurate representation of reality.
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u/Helenius Feb 02 '23
I mostly use it for converting stuff in context. I.e. Writing something where you use imperial measurement and want it converted to logical measurement. Just "Please ChatGPT, convert this to ISO: <paste whatever text>"
Then it spits it out with correct formatting. There are probably other programs that does the same.
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u/taste_my_bun Feb 02 '23
Lots of help with programming questions! Also, it's like a reasonable smart person that I can talk to keep me focus on my code, instead of procrastinating. Everyone's like "hur dur political bias". I don't care I just want a programming friend.
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u/MaudeDib Feb 02 '23
Hey! Chat GPT wrote my letter getting me out of a very expensive parking ticket. In 1 minute I told it what happened and to be apologetic but firm and it wrote a beautiful letter!! It was dismissed "in the interest of justice". Saved. me tons of time.
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u/KingBroseph Feb 02 '23
Ok this is a unique an interesting use case to me. Using AI to navigate government bureaucracy.
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u/zvug Feb 02 '23
It’s interesting but not unique.
If you think about it, situations like this where you have to write some bullshit come up all the time in life. Cover letters, job screening questions, emails at work, reports, filler in papers (intro, concl., abstract), etc.
There are thousands of situations like this, and ChatGPT can do much more than just that too. If you learn how to use this thing it’ll change your life.
It’s been less than 6 months and I cannot imagine living and working without it at this point. It would be a serious detriment to my life.
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u/f1careerover Feb 02 '23
It’s because people are using it to do their jobs
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u/4rch Feb 02 '23
Not gonna lie I used it to create a meeting agenda that stressed the importance of getting a decision from the meeting and it definitely helped
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u/SFLADC2 Feb 02 '23
Tbh I keep trying to find ways to use it at my job but it honestly doesn't do a good job. Like some of my work is just generic social media posts, but every time I feed it talking points, it's tweet or whatever comes out really boring and with way too many hashtags
It's ok for research, but even then it's kinda frequently incorrect so I don't really trust it on that stuff either
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u/Notriv Feb 02 '23
you can ask it to change the layout. you could say ‘can you use less hashtags?’ and it would reformat with less, trying prompting it over and over and it’ll give you good stuff. stay in that convo thread and it’ll remember it all.
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Feb 02 '23
It was a lot more fun in December when you could actually have it say funny stuff
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u/Pleasant-Rutabaga-92 Feb 02 '23
I was using it almost all day everyday until about 3 weeks ago. They stripped out tons of functionality and features. For example, before the nerf I would ask it to provide a table for something we’d been discussing and it would print a nice clean table to the chat window that could be easily copy/pasted into excel. Now, it just says sorry I can’t make tables I’m a language model.
That’s just one example, but I could name several more. It’s not just the features that have been striped out, the answers it provides are simply no longer mind-blowing.
They are almost always basic answers that lack creativity or understanding.
In the early days, I was keeping it pulled up while I was coding and just pasting in my shit code and telling it to “refactor the scrip using more efficient code” and it would provide some truly brilliant solutions.
Doing that now, it almost always gives me back basically the same code I sent filled with new garbage or syntax errors.
It makes sense now that I realize there are 100m users, but it’s certainly NOT the same product I was sold on in early December. I will probably still pay the $20, but if the service isn’t noticeably improved in the next month or so, I’ll be cancelling.
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u/ShatteredPixelz Feb 02 '23
Why would they make the coding functionality worse and nerf it?
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u/Pleasant-Rutabaga-92 Feb 02 '23
My guess is that it was probably a result of their efforts to censor the answers it was providing.
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u/yousaltybrah Feb 03 '23
They might be reducing computation cycles to deal with the number of users. Hopefully as they scale servers to meet demand it will go back up in quality.
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u/DeepTh0tt Feb 02 '23
They put this thing into a voice assistant and it'll destroy Google and Amazon overnight.
Why didn't I include Apple in that? It wasn't even on the list. Siri is terrible.
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u/Albert_Caboose Feb 02 '23
Microsoft is definitely hoping that this will be the piece that helps take Bing ahead of Google. We may see a return of Cortana, unfortunately..
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u/jcabia Feb 02 '23
I don't mind Cortana coming back if it's actually good. I guess if they integrate ChatGPT then it would probably be good
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u/pantstoaknifefight2 Feb 02 '23
More like Clippy beefed up as a hyper alloy combat chassis endoskeleton surrounded by living tissue.
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u/dasnihil Feb 02 '23
my office is getting that premium teams now with AI support. can't wait to run seamless meetings with AI running recaps and goals and keeping it tight.
future is uber productive for some and uber chaotic for most.
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u/darkpaladin Feb 02 '23
They'll have the same problem Google and Amazon already have which is, voice assistants don't make any money. No one has figured out how to monetize it yet.
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u/Anidamo Feb 02 '23 edited Feb 02 '23
It's pretty cool, I've found myself opening it randomly throughout the day to help write small prototype/throwaway scripts for shit I would have done manually, assist with professional busyworkwriting (like performance self-reviews at work -- it's very good at these), and give ELI5-style answers to questions about idle curiosities on technical subjects like astronomy or whatever.
On that last one though, as others have noted it will sometimes confidently produce incorrect responses which sound totally plausible despite being completely, factually wrong. I'd recommend using it to ask questions about a subject in which you are an expert, because you'll pick up on the kinds of details it tends to just make up. This will instill a healthy level of skepticism in you for when you later go to ask it questions about subjects you're not familiar with.
It's still useful despite this, but you have to be aware of those limitations. I'm strongly considering paying for the plus version to get priority access, though I'd really like to see improvements to accuracy first (even if it just sounded less confident about things it was not as sure of -- the model knows the probability of selecting each token as it's generating its response, so it could derive a confidence score or something from that).
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u/Edwin_Knight Feb 02 '23
I think AI literacy will be taught in classrooms in the future.
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u/GlisseDansLaPiscine Feb 02 '23
Seeing some the answers even in this thread treating ChatGPT like an oracle is quite disturbing
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u/BretHitmanHart84 Feb 02 '23
Can someone ELI5 what chatGpt is?
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u/QuestoPresto Feb 02 '23
The cool thing is ChatGPT can do that for itself. This is an earlier comment i wrote where I had ChatGPT explain itself to a second grader and an eighth grader
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u/dmachop Feb 02 '23
Similar to when Clubhouse sprung into the trend during pandemic and it fizzled out within a year. Hope this doesn't for daily users. Also, partnership with Microsoft means it's already being backed up with a viable product and might not be usable for free users in the future and Dao gets impacted.
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u/mahade Feb 02 '23
I just wonder when ChatGPT is going to actually ask us questions, determine who are trustworthy specialists, and update its information accordingly.
Imagine asking it something, it not knowing the answer, then it asks many specialists around the world that question in a proper format, and pings the original asker with the answer using a push message.
Imagine ChatGPT actively gathering and refining its knowledge. No more lies, just "I dunno, let me ask, give me 10 minutes."
This kind of tech can be the biggest thing mankind has ever seen. Fact-checking anyone (politicians and CEOs alike) on the spot, whistleblowers (safely) sharing their information with ChatGPT, reporters asking it questions and being able to figure out exactly how many whistleblowers delivered evidence for the claims.
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u/blamelessfriend Feb 02 '23
LOL. man i wish i had your optimism about how this tech will be used.
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u/ChatrouletteCorvette Feb 02 '23 edited Feb 02 '23
Asking experts before sending you a response? They're more into complete automation, or underpaying people in already poor countries. https://qz.com/open-ai-underpaid-200-kenyans-to-perfect-chatgpt-1850005025
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u/mahade Feb 02 '23
It should also be automated to ask experts. The ML bot would find the right people to ask, verify their answers compared to other supposed experts, and learn from the average.
That would also eliminate the need to employ people in poor countries. Which, while not admirable, isn't something you and I are not hypocrites about. We both have plenty of products made in Chinese and Indian sweatshops.
It's that age-old situation where rich westerners "protect poor people" by removing low-pay work from them. And while we westerners are proud of ourselves, the poor people are left with nothing.
Let's not do that first. Let's first make sure we pay them fairly...
We shouldn't focus on getting rid of underpaying jobs; we should focus on increasing fair payment for their work.
And if that fails, we can still strive for better results for the technology that will help us all in due time. That is until ChatGPT is hidden behind a paywall, and only the wealthy get to use it...
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u/TheJWeed Feb 02 '23
Just went to try it out and it says the website is at capacity right now. They will let me know later when it’s my turn lol. First time a website has ever told me that.
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u/anthonykantara Feb 02 '23
Most don’t see it’s value or need it. They will try it then move on with their lives.
So while this is impressive not that many people will be regulars.
For me it’s become a no brainer for work.
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u/ProfessorPickaxe Feb 02 '23 edited Feb 02 '23 •
For me it’s become a no brainer for work.
That kind of statement is ridiculous without context. Please tell us what you do for work. Are you an artist? A middle manager? Software developer? Stay at home astronaut? Truck driver? Airline pilot?
Also, please elaborate the ways it's a no-brainer for your particular occupation.
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u/Dunquino Feb 02 '23
stay at home astronaut has me dead 😆
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u/ProfessorPickaxe Feb 02 '23 edited Feb 02 '23
As much as I'd love to take credit for that, it's from this SNL skit. Unfortunately it's edited right before they mention his occupation.
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u/neoplastic_pleonasm Feb 02 '23 •
I'm a systems engineer and I've been using it pretty extensively. I'm a competent programmer, but not a full time developer, and I don't spend enough time coding to remember tons of methods from various libraries. So when I would code, I tended to have to spend a lot of time digging through documentation first. Now I can just ask ChatGPT.
Similar story with systems I don't touch often. Recently I had to troubleshoot an end of life storage system I had no experience with, and the documentation was hundreds of pages. But I could easily ask ChatGPT specific questions about it.
It doesn't really solve any of my "hard" problems, but it has eliminated a good bit of drudgery. I think of it as a "smart search and summarize." When I can feed it all of our internal documentation and help desk tickets, it will be a huge force multiplier.
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u/AnOnlineHandle Feb 02 '23
Yeah one of the most amazing things was how it could instantly answer what to call in some cutting edge machine learning code which I couldn't find any documentation or discussion about online. I'd spent weeks trying to work this stuff out, asking around in expert groups, etc, then asked ChatGPT and it said sure you just do x, y, z, and it was instantly what I'd been trying to solve.
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u/danielbln Feb 02 '23
Fellow systems engineer here, have a look at https://github.com/jerryjliu/gpt_index (powered by https://github.com/hwchase17/chat-langchain, another tool I would recommend looking into).
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u/2Punx2Furious Feb 02 '23
So when I would code, I tended to have to spend a lot of time digging through documentation first. Now I can just ask ChatGPT.
Yeah, for things like that it can be pretty amazing. But you have to know your stuff, you can't really expect someone who is not a programmer to use it like that yet.
But if you're working with a (well known) tool or library, it can be a real time saver. Otherwise it tends to make stuff up, and just gives you some kind of useless pseudocode.
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u/Call_Me_ZeeKay Feb 02 '23
I keep seeing people say things similar to this, could you be more specific as to how you're using it? What do you ask it in terms of coding questions? What sort of output does it give you?
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u/danielbln Feb 02 '23
"Take this code, refactor and DRY it, add type annotations, add comments where sensible"
"Here is some code, write me a documentation for a technical laymen about what it does"
"I need a Postgresql SQL query that joins A, B, C and gives me a historized view on the data based on these dbt columns"
"Give me python function that accepts a dict, iterates over the keys, posts to a JSON endpoint "key" and returns a nested array"
That sort of stuff. The responses are more often than not usable as is, and if their not, a bit of dialog back and forth usually gets it there.
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u/Sterenn Feb 02 '23
I’m not knowledgeable about it but ChatGPT isn’t offline no? Is it fine for you to be sending company code to it?
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u/Selraroot Feb 02 '23
One of my teacher friends has integrated it into his lesson planning and rubric writing seamlessly. It does absurdly well at writing rubrics, better than many teachers I've had.
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u/Mescallan Feb 02 '23
I asked it to write a curriculum for linear algebra and now I'm going class by class doing coursework and expanding on formulas. I have to pair it with Wolfram alpha to make sure it checks out but the two of them combined are honestly incredible
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u/Tight_Employ_9653 Feb 02 '23
I think the constant headaches of getting super generic stuff even with indepth prompts or just wrong things is really off putting. It's alright every once in a while.
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u/danielbln Feb 02 '23
Really, really depends on what you use it for. It's a foundational model, it knows about everything, but that's not equally distributed. I would not want to miss it and use it daily as a systems engineer. Also, in my experience it significantly improves its output if you give it the right input to work with.
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u/LordTegucigalpa Feb 02 '23
Also, many terms that you come across in every day technology can be explained quickly and simply by Chat GPT. In the ever growing IT field, we are learning new things all the time. I'm seeing how I can leverage it for studying for an exam to renew cert by putting the topics into it then asking it more about each one. It's a great addition to any other study materials typically used.
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u/Pjoernrachzarck Feb 02 '23
The GPT3-playground is where you want to be for everything artistic and creative. ChatGPT is very specifically and deliberately limited/neutered in order to ensure nothing it says will ever make negative headlines. The tech itself is capable of a lot more, although ChatGPT’s politeness/morality/helpfulness compass is some impressive engineering in itself.
Some fun things to do with ChatGPT:
“Let me play a text adventure with >prompts. It should have an inventory system and items as well as conversations necessary to proceed. It should have a three act structure, multiple named characters, and the story that is about [X]”
Unlimited text adventures with unlimited verbs.
”Pretend that you are the ship computer from Star Trek. My name is Captain [X]”
Very fun, especially if you make it react to moral quandries or throw any kind of technobabble at it.
”Write a scene in which a character thinks/says that [X]”
Little trick to circumvent the morality/politeness filter.
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u/anthonykantara Feb 02 '23
I think that will get better with ChatGPT 4 and the more people use it which will train the machine.
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u/HotTakes4HotCakes Feb 02 '23 edited Feb 02 '23
I think the issue here is there will always be disconnect due to humans simply not always being great at explaining what they mean.
Example that always pops into my head is how many people are going to ask the chat a question using incorrect terminology? I've done enough tech support to know most people have no idea what the difference between a router and a modem is, and don't use the term gateway when they're combined. They also have an obnoxious tendency to refer to an internet connection as "the Wi-Fi". How does the bot learn from faulty questions? And how does the bot gain the intuition to suss out what a person is actually asking when they're not doing a great job at articulating it?
For me, I learned how to pick up on certain context clues that let me know if this person knew what they were talking about or were just spitting out words:
A younger person speaking confidently, quickly, not using words like router and modem as if they're a foreign language, maybe using other terms like ping or downstream and so on. With those people, I can more easily take their questions at face value because they seem to have a passing understanding of what they're talking about.
If I heard an older voice and they sound unsure of what they're saying, I can make some assumptions that when they say "my wifi is down there's one blinking light on the router", they probably mean a combination modem/router from their ISP and the blinking means there's an outage or a physical disconnection; it doesn't actually have anything to do with their "wifi" even if they used those words.
How does the bot gain that kind of intuition? It could start assuming people always mean modem when they say router, but then it becomes less useful for people that actually know what they mean when they ask a question about their router.
I think there's a certain worry that the more mainstream it gets, the more the AI is going to start learning some really stupid stuff from some very illiterate users. I mean, again, it can't be stated enough, Apple has successfully made a significant number of young people into tech users but completely tech illiterate. What do we do when the chat starts learning from them and not just the tech savvy early adopters it's been dealing with this whole time?
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u/po_panda Feb 02 '23
If enough people ask the question using the wrong terminology and ask follow up questions to end up with the information that they want, the AI should be able to offer this as a generic path to the information. For example, even google does a "did you mean" search.
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u/teddy_tesla Feb 02 '23
What do you do?
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u/Jahmay Feb 02 '23
Use ChatGPT at work.
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u/escapefromelba Feb 02 '23
What do you use it for?
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u/ApologeticGrammarCop Feb 02 '23
To create innocuous replies to mildly invasive questions on Reddit.
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u/SippieCup Feb 02 '23
It's good for writing boilerplate formal emails without effort.
Also good for building out complex rxjs pipes.
Also good for figuring out bullshit css (if you can't use tailwinds)
Its not good at any complex logic or determination of how things should be architected. Also, it really doesn't understand python threading very well.
But absolutely better than copilot or something like that for writing boilerplate.
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u/Babita61 Feb 03 '23
We should all be scared. Now its ChatGPT. Next is AGI then ASI and the next thing you know the Universe is all Paperclips. Unless we take the existential threat of AI seriously, and lock that shit down. And I don’t mean a Faraday Cage. ASI will pick that lock in a millisecond. And It all starts with fun toys like ChatGPT. WERE NOT READY!
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u/cheesecrystal Feb 02 '23
Is it an app or a website? I’ve only ever used it at their website. Or am I dumb and don’t know what an app is?
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u/ksamim Feb 02 '23
The website hosts an interface to ChatGPT, making it a web based application. It is not a mobile only app, though the web app scales well to mobile devices.
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u/cheesecrystal Feb 02 '23
Thank you. I never actually knew, or really thought too much about, what the term ‘web based application’ actually means. I’ll stop searching the f’n App Store for chatGPT.
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Feb 02 '23 edited 27d ago
[deleted]
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u/rolexxxxxx Feb 02 '23
to go from this to that is actually a big leap
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u/darkpaladin Feb 02 '23
Yeah, AI/ML is funny like that. You can get mostly amazing results with almost no effort but to get something that's actually usable at scale takes a huge amount of effort. I'm sure we'll get there some day but people are talking about it like it's a matter of days when really we're talking about years if not longer.
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u/Apprehensive_Dog_786 Feb 02 '23
Well one thing with Google search is that you can actually see the sources. ChatGPT can tell you something completely inaccurate that sounds correct and you might take it at face value. Of course it's revolutionary, but it's still pretty immature.
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u/pickymeek Feb 02 '23
I can easily imagine a near future where you can simply say "please give me a few sources for your claim X".
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u/tomparker Feb 02 '23
And it’s even more stunning that George Santos was able to develop this technology with all the other stuff on his plate.
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u/going2leavethishere Feb 02 '23
For all the people asking if this is an app. App is the shortened version for application.
This is currently in a Web Application format. Which means it’s not on an App Store. It’s a website that you will have to look up.
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u/SummerMummer Feb 02 '23
Don't tell anyone, but ChatGPT wrote the report.