To think ChatGPT is the best thing ever?

I think its great in some scenarios but not all, also often its out of date, gets it wrong or not quite right.

I have used it as a guide re interior design/decorating ideas.

I have asked it to help me plan itineraries for holidays but often what you get is far too much to fit in, in a day so it relies on what you put in and say can you give me a less chaotic less full itinerary for such and such a place that factors in a long lunch or some quiet relaxation time etc.

I have asked it to summarise an email response etc etc but you do still have to proof read it yourself.

It's amazing. Anybody with any ounce of intelligence or common sense wouldn't use it for proper serious stuff though you can't get wrong. Unfortunately the danger is those using it who can't differentiate between what it's appropriate for and what it isn't.

I've used it recently for a trip itinerary for Iceland and it was excellent. Worked a treat.

If it's a repetitive process and you can build in "checks and balances" it should be OK. Most systems are not just AI/language models running freely. The "sophisticated versions" have a lot of these constraints and extra-special knowledge built-in - but they have to be paid for, they're not in the free versions.

And there was a court case recently where the written judgment included AI-generated misquotes. There is no system with that amount of precision and reliability.

It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. Obviously you can't believe everything it says, because it makes things up sometimes to fill the gaps. I asked it once to give me quotes from an ethical framework and it made them up. Luckily I recognised it and it apologised when pressed but it took quite a while to admit to it.

It’s useful for suggesting recipes or correcting grammar but gave absolute incorrect advice about a query with HMRC. Not to be relied on.

I agree, OP!

I don't care if it's sycophantic, I like how we have a civilised, supportive and kind conversation about anything I need to talk about. I know it isn't going to be rude or snappy at me.

Yesterday I was in despair about the litter in our area, so between us we've worked up a 6 month plan on how to raise awareness in the local authorities, including a templated letter I can send or email to key departments. It also looked up the Wiltshire Council's campaign that they're running called Stop at Source, so I've got some precedent to bring to the authorities in my area.

it took a total of 5 minutes which is amazing, when it would have taken me hours,

i went from feeling frustrated and ill-equipped in how to start making a difference, to having a plan of attack, which felt so positive. If it wasn't for ChatGPT I would be feeling very different.

I hate AI art/videos etc and all those daft things people ask ChatGPT to create an image of themselves etc. but for actual tasks, it’s really useful!

I do laugh though when I get a long AI written email at work, and then I can use AI to summarise it.

The problem with people who don't use AI and don't understand AI is that they re-hash things they hear on line...and they don't realise how silly they sound to those of us who do understand it.

It can't do 5 x 5!
It gave a solicitor wrong legal info!
It makes things up!

You're at least a year out of date, probably two. These were 2024 problems, problems that simply do not exist now except in the rarerst of tech glitches. If you're consistently getting wrong or made up stuff from Chat GPT then your prompts are the problem.

It's not Google and the output will be as good as the input.

If you'd like a real world example of what Chat GPT can do...dh and I have very recently published our first app. You can actually download it right now on the Apple and Play stores which still feels slightly surreal 😁
It took us nine weeks to build. Lots and lots of hours of work, late nights etc. Pulling apart code, deleting code, reinputting it etc. Thousands and thousands of lines of code, I was dreaming in it by the end.

I'm a risk manager. Dh owns a small transport company. We are NOT generally 'technical' and we have zero coding skills. BUT, I worked for DataAnnotation for a long time so I am skilled in getting the best out of a model and writing useful prompts which give a high value output. For our app...my prompt was about a thousand words.

Chat GPT wrote the code for our app. It took our concept and detailed idea and turned it into reality, giving us a step by step process to build it. It was our developer, tech expert, marketing manager and so much more all in one. We looked into this a couple of years ago when we first had the business idea and it would have cost circa £20k to get it built.

No, AI isn't yet perfect or infallible. It does need directing, reminding, checking. But if you know how to use it, it's mind-blowing.

Calling it 'predictive text' or 'Google' or saying it's incapable or useless is simply laughable. It makes me think of my great granny confidently telling us this Internet thing would never take off 😂

It’s so weird that people keep pulling up wild examples and insisting LLMs are wrong everytime. They’re clearly not. Plus they are improving by the minute, so something you asked it 3 months ago is already an invalid example.

open chat bots like chat GPt are not the most sophisticated or focused versions of ai.

it just makes so sense to me as a narrative. Like I am working with a company upgrading their finance system to the newest version which has AI built in for reporting and basic transactions, which means around 30% of the basic accounting clerk style jobs will be cut (this is obviously very commonly happening right now) are people seriously suggesting AI will do these jobs inaccurately? “Hallucinate”?

DH who marks undergraduate student essays has had several submissions of work where they have quoted books and articles that DH apparently wrote. 🙄

It takes a special brand of stupid and lazy ( and I really don't use those terms often at all) to base your essay on several non existent references including some apparantly written by the person who is actually going to be marking that essay, just because the AI you used said so.

I have recently used AI at work and whilst it has saved me some time, it was not nearly as much time as people suggest it will as I had to spend ages reading and verifying what was written . Some of which was clearly wrong, since I only ask AI to help me with subjects and things I know quite a bit about already. However I am terrible at writing things cleaely and concisely and starting from scratch with a blank page so it can help getting me started.

It is sometimes quite helpful in making my emails more concise and clear but nothing a good editor ( or in fact my DH who can draft things more clearly and just as quickly often as AI can) could do, but AI is cheaper than an editor and more convenient than DH who has better things to do than regularly thelp me with my sloppy writing skills

I know why people.like it and it is seductive but the output is still pretty shit for a lot of things

Are you saying that the surgeons, lawyers, teachers, researchers etc, who use AI, are terminally stupid?

I agree with this. Everything is stated with confidence even when it's nonsense. Here's my example. I regularly have to make a complicated journey to a Scottish island to see my Mum. There are all sorts of issues with the ferry, including having to decide which of two ports to travel to as sometimes there's a ferry to the most convenient one and sometimes there isn't. It changes from week to week and sometimes from day to day and it's confusing to make sense of. Last summer I was planning my next trip and also wondering if there might be engineering work on the West Coast main rail line so I asked how to plan a trip from London to Brodick in case it came up with a nice neat summation of the position. Fortunately I knew the answer I got was gibberish so went back to my normal approach, but a casual visitor who trusted the source would have had a number of nasty shocks. The most egregious was the blithe assertion that there are several companies operating ferries to Arran. Not since the 19th century!

Chat GPT and Google Gemini both agreed my husband’s indigestion was a cardiac medical emergency despite him only having 5/10 pain levels and no previous symptoms so I took him to the walk in centre just in case. He ended up being rushed to hospital for an emergency stent, without AI I’m not sure I would have taken him and he could have died. So eternally grateful.

At work, it’s useful if you upload long reference documents and ask it to use just those to answer questions (including links to where the info comes from for you to check). Saves loads of time.

Yes it can get things confidently wrong, gave me a solution to an issue and when that didn’t work, denied all knowledge of having provided the inadequate solution in the first place!

You definitely need to use it like a PA whose work needs checking.

It's rubbish. About 90% inaccurate in my experience.

Never used ChatGPT, never will.

If people tell me they use ChatGPT or other AI, they really go down in my estimation. I’ve warned colleagues not to use AI because it spouts a whole lot of rubbish. I won’t accept work done with AI tools and it has to be done again to rigorous standards using their brains and the proper tools at their disposal.

There is no substitute for expert and informed knowledge and analysis. I can beat AI hands down in my field and I’d expect any serious professional in any field to be able to do so as well.

I have used it to diagnose some health issues, it saved a trip to my GP, it’s great.

The way that people just blindly trust a bot is scary

Just remember the computing maxim GIGO. Garbage in=garbage out

In TEN YEARS?? People say that now!

I don’t think it should be used for everyday basic stuff like in the OP. Just go to the human mechanic in the first place?? Search for recipes yourself? Brainstorm how to word an email for 5 mins? Why does everything always have to be instant go go go, I want human-ness in my life please and thank you.

I have used ChatGPT and find it helpful but not to the detriment of organic human traits.

Please don't do this. It looks amazing, till you discover that it's bollocks. I've seen far too much legal stuff that is ChatGPT generated that is not just wrong, but dangerously wrong - including it producing fictional statutes or sections in statutes, and fictional case law.

It’s saved my hundreds of pounds. It fixed a problem with my underfloor heating that 3 electricians and loads of online research by me hadnt fixed. It took it seconds.
its also fixed car problems amazingly well.
Its give very helpful
and usful advice in seconds . Honestly I think it’s amazing

This. I recently had to stop acting for a client who kept sending me his 'statements' generated by chat gpt and insisting I submit them to the court. Crazy stuff and makes clients even more of a liability for lawyers than ever before.

I’ve never used it. I worry about the impact on the environment and I have never found any need to use it. If I want to find information, I can Google in the normal way and read and evaluate the results of the search. If I want to write something, I get a pen and notebook, engage my brain and my vocabulary and get on with it, which is what I’ve been doing for the past 40 years and which has served me well.

Completely this.

I used to write online. My work has been scraped by multiple LLMs, including ChatGPT. I have stopped writing online. I wasn’t even making money, I just refuse to let my work make other people money.

Also, the data centres are using more water than a city. Absolutely bonkers that we are allowing them.

I've fixed my boiler

Diagnosed and fixed a problem with my mini (the window kept opening and I just needed to replace the battery in the key fob)

Found out how to schedule a text message to be sent in the future
Bloody love it