How you can make AI like ChatGPT work FOR you (and not against you)

The introduction of AI programs like ChatGPT in the world of tech has worried and confused many.

Being able to generate song lyrics, write articles (don’t worry this article wasn’t done by it) and do many other menial tasks at the touch of a button (and with a few prompts), people in the work force are worried that it may take over some jobs.

Even the creators of GPT-4 (ChatGPT's successor), OpenAI, have said that they're a little bit scared over their own creation.

It doesn’t help that GPT-4 is able to do things that are more advanced, such as coming up with a recipe that you can use just by showing it a picture of the ingredients in your fridge, or writing a script for a performance. In fact, thanks to Microsoft, it can even do your PowerPoint presentation slides for you if you ask it to.

And while it is a reasonable fear that this can make some jobs redundant, AI can actually help the workforce, if you know how to harness it to make your work more efficient.

In fact, if you asked about what jobs it would replace, ChatGPT responds with:

"However, it is important to note that while some tasks may be automated, technology like me can also help to augment and support human workers, enabling them to be more productive and efficient in their roles."

With that in mind, here are a few tips on how to make AI chatbot programs work for you.

Use its efficiency

Sure, AI can do many things. But it is still a program. It is not going to do anything if you don't give it any instructions.

But when it is requested to do tasks, it does the job wonderfully (most of the time). This can help the user to make their job easier.

If you are a minute-taker (the ones that takes notes during a meeting) for example, chances are the majority of your time is wasted is trying to format the notes into something coherent and pleasant for any reader moving forward.

With the introduction of GPT-4 into the Microsoft Office suit, it can even help you reformat all of this in an instant, and save you a lot of time trying to do something menial like formatting the text.

After the AI program has done its work, all you need to do is to look for errors in the information (and trust me, the current iterations of these AI still have a lot of them).

This function can be used on a variety of things, like slide presentations, cleaning up grammar and also beautifying your excel sheets. All of this can increase productivity, and you will not need to waste time on the little silly things like formatting.

Use it to find inspiration

I am pretty sure most of us have been through this little thing called a mental block.

Be it in writing, art, or even coming up with talking points in meetings, we all have those days when we go “I really don’t know what to do or say about this”.

This is where an AI like ChatGPT and GPT-4 can greatly help.

Since these AI are able to concoct responses to your queries (and sometimes even wildly different responses for different people), you can bounce ideas off them.

For example, if you are looking to phrase a sentence without sounding too confrontational, you are able to request ChatGPT to come up with a response that is softer and less likely to offend people.

In fact, if you are looking to write a song about a certain random topic, you could give it keywords such as “cute cat” and ask it to come up with lyrics in the style of an Eminem rap.

The possibilities of this are endless when it comes to finding inspiration, but that also leads to our next point.

But... DO NOT wholly rely on it

Sure, AI can help your daily tasks and give you inspiration.

But it is still a program after all. It also relies on the information that is fed to it, and some information can be very wrong (have you seen social media?).

It can also lack a ‘human touch’, which may be very obvious if you are fully relying on it to give you inspiration and responses.

While such programs look like they could come up with art on their own, the fact that these AI-generated images lack some aspects of being generated by a human is obvious (just search for AI art and fingers).

This is also why artists have been trying to fight back against the reliance on AI.

Lyrics and scripts could sound robotic, while wrong information could be presented as facts or woven into the responses if you are asking for information about a topic.

I personally have tried to get GPT-4 to come up with a lesson plan for a fitness class, but it failed to also take into account the fitness level of the students, no matter how many times I tried to give it information.

A lot of the exercises seemed to cater towards superhuman functions, and there is no way a ‘beginner’ (yes that is the exact word I used) could do one hundred 60kg weighted squats in a row.

This is the ‘human’ touch that is lacking.

I also have had friends who tried to ask for a summary of a topic from a dissertation (spoiler alert; they wrote that dissertation). And GPT-4 has cheekily inserted points in the summary that were nowhere present in the writeup.

I don't know what causes it to do this, but this just goes to show that you definitely need to vet the responses and take them with a grain of salt.

Conclusion

AI programs can definitely make our lives better, but we shouldn’t wholly rely on these programs to 'replace' anything.

While they could help us in being efficient, the ‘human’ side of things must always be present to fact-check and also adjust their ‘help’ according to the situation.

If one somehow feels threatened by AI's existence, learn its capabilities and faults and let it help your body of work, instead of letting it totally replace you. Adaptation is the key to harnessing these programs.

Dominic loves tech and games. When he is not busy watercooling his computer parts, he does some pro wrestling.