Do you use chat GPT?

[WildflowersBarley]

I use chat GPT quite a bit for work, tracking work achievements, planning projects, home life such as planning holidays, activities for my toddler, meal planning and shopping lists, workout plans, even tracking symptoms when I’m sick which has been useful for updating doctors etc.

I’m now fascinated if other people do this? If so how do you use it to help either work / family / social / general organisation?!

Are you concerned about the sheer volume of personal data you're providing?

@MoveYourSelfDearie no more so than every time you use a search engine or post something on social media

@WildflowersBarley yes I use ChatGPT daily for all sorts and find it a very useful tool.

Three Sons use it for writing letters to clients,

writing advertising copy for social media .

designing posters.

I wrote a personalised children's story for my grandsons which was brilliant.

I look after a holiday cottage and hadnt put my rates up for a long time. I put in all the details and asked ChatGPT for a quote based on other local providers.

It gave a detailed breakdown which looked really useful. Anyway, I accidentally closed the page so I put the details in again and it gave me totally different answers.

I avoid it on account of its enormous carbon footprint. It seems nuts to use it so casually. Granted, any time online is problematic in this way, but using AI when it's not really necessary seems gratuitous.
It can't provide any services that I am not able to do myself.

This! A ChatGPT enquiry uses almost ten times as much energy as a Google enquiry, I learnt this morning.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c15q5qzdjqxo

Honestly - not personally… I don’t share anything I wouldn’t be comfortable with. But I understand why there could be concern.

Personalised children’s stories is a great idea!!!
i have done lullabies in the past

its not reliable for anything serious. DH is using a tool called Perplexity quite a bit which while it does use AI for processing questions and responses, relies more on searches and so can provide proper referenced info not hallucinations.

I ask it for references for something like this as sometimes answers are pretty wild and vary

The water consumption is a concern too. However…. What about the impact it could have on industries, it’s impact on efficiencies within industries such as agriculture could be hugely sustainable…

you definetly have to check sources yes! Interesting - I haven’t used perplexity

@WildflowersBarley you seem to use it indiscriminately. When you rely so much on AI it takes away your own research skills and the knowledge you pick up.

Also, your intensive approach has increased environmental impacts since an AI search takes x10 energy as a basic internet search. Do you have any concerns about that especially as a mom with kids?

I use it in a targeted way, I don’t ask it random questions. I would never use it to research alone I would ask it if I find me papers which I then read - this saves so much time…. and Maybe even ten or more Google searches to get to that point! 😉 do you agree it could reduce carbon consumption in other industries? And personal carbon consumption… for example if we only bought the food we needed from the supermarket and it didn’t go off because we planned our meals and we didn’t nip back to the shop twice in the week for bits we forgot? I think the answer is more nuanced… as with everything in sustainability! 🤷‍♀️

Yeah, I use it at work quick a lot. I code a lot at work. It isn't good at a lot of things but it can type faster than me if I tell it exactly what I want it to do. It's also better for answering quick questions faster than Google with examples using your exact use case. Some examples might be for data engineering and getting data in the form you want it. You can feed in a data set (without any protected data of course) and get it to write a function to drop lines with missing data, interpolate other missing data and group/bucket data in another column in seconds. Then copy the function and verify it all in half the time that it would have taken me to write out the functions myself. I wouldn't trust it with anything I couldn't quality check myself and I don't use it for anything more complex than I would be confident debugging myself in one go. I also don't tend to use it for anything more novel than I would pass off to a junior member of staff (if I had the spare capacity).

No, not at all.
I purposely avoid using it, it takes away our ability to write for ourselves. I was shocked in my last job to find teachers using it for work and to write their end of term reports. They just saw it as a tool to help save time, I just think it takes away someone's ability to write something for themselves. Such a shame.

I do a great deal of writing myself. If you write enough you will find your own written "voice"....something entirely lost with chat GPT and similar. However, I'm aware that in years to come, it will become the norm. It makes me wonder what will happen to creative writing, poetry, articles, reports....

If people were using it for that sort of thing then no doubt it could be useful. But when people are using it for things they could really do themselves then it's worrying.
I've stopped using it for environmental reasons.

asking for references can result in pure fiction (unless they’ve drastically improved since I last tried it)

So many threads like this recently 🤔

I’m thinking of trying it for answers to possible interview questions; can anyone give me some pointers pleases?

or @ErrolTheDragon (great un!) can you advise re. Perplexity?

Do you use a washing machine, or wash by hand?
Do you use a car to get to places, or walk?

I've only used it a couple of times, but it isn't all that bright. It has recommended to me songs that don't exist, provided incorrect lyrics, and made up film quotes.

No. We’re not allowed to use it at work because you’re giving it confidential data. And the results I’ve seen when my students try to use it are alarming. It invents stuff, to the point of making up book and article references that don’t exist. Lots of students have been dragged through cheating investigations and failed modules thanks to ChatGPT.

I just use the free version; DH has a subscription which allows unlimited number of ‘deep research’ type questions.