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What does Chat GPT actually do?

107 replies

Pricelessadvice · 05/07/2025 13:57

I’ve heard of it, obviously, but I’ve never used it or downloaded it.

I assume people use it for writing things, like formal letters, but what else might the everyday person use it for?
I’m a bit bewildered by it really. Can you talk to it?

OP posts:
NescafeAndIce · 05/07/2025 14:05

You ask it things, and using a complex language predicting formula it presents a sequence of words that it has been programmed to calculate as the most likely sequence that fulfils the request.

lljkk · 05/07/2025 14:07

it types things back at you that superficially sound like result of thinking or logic but it's all probability based with words put in reasonable gramatical order (for English speakers). It says completely crazy stuff because it's deeply not intelligent.

NescafeAndIce · 05/07/2025 14:08

I have used it to re-draft Marketing comms, but you have to watch out for it changing factual information.
I've used it for basic maths calculations and it gets it wrong then lies to you when you point it out.

It can be useful for googling - eg I wanted to know what the names of restaurants that had been in a premises over the years had been, and Google is terrible for historic info that has since been overwritten. It got it mostly right. But on other occasions it will just make stuff up.

Although some people have chatted to it and it indulges their delusions... some have been convinced they're either God or talking to God!

Wallywobbles · 05/07/2025 14:10

ask it a question. You can use it like Google a bit when you don’t know something and it’ll explain it to you (without images).
you can ask it how to set up a business and to give you ideas. You could then discuss these with it and it would help you every step of the way.
You can upload pdfs and tables etc into and ask for insights.
you can ask it to summarize reports.

MyIvyGrows · 05/07/2025 14:11

I’ve most recently asked it to summarise the first three series of The Bear because I wanted a reminder that was more succinct than reading through the Wikipedia synopsis. It’s good for stuff like that. I also asked it to tell me about The Lion Guard because DS watches that when he’s with his dad and I don’t know anything about it. So for me it replaces Wikipedia. Some of my colleagues use CoPilot at work but I’ve never felt the need to use it for that, don’t want to stop thinking at work!

Wallywobbles · 05/07/2025 14:11

This is chatGPTs response to your question:
Sure! Here’s a warm and clear response you could post as a reply to that question:

Great question — and you’re definitely not alone in wondering this!

ChatGPT is an AI you can talk to, ask questions, or get help from — kind of like a very knowledgeable assistant who’s available 24/7. You don’t need to download anything to use it — just go to chat.openai.com or use the app.

Yes, people use it to write formal letters, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Everyday users turn to ChatGPT for things like:

  • Explaining complex topics in plain English
  • Brainstorming ideas (e.g. gift ideas, business names, meal plans)
  • Writing emails, CVs, or cover letters
  • Getting help with homework or studying
  • Translating or improving writing
  • Planning trips, meals, or events
  • Learning new skills step by step

And honestly? A lot of people just use it to think through things — like having a second brain to bounce ideas off.

You can type to it like you would to a person: “What’s the difference between an ISA and a pension?” or “Help me write a kind but firm reply to this message.”

Hope that helps! Happy to share some examples if that’s useful.

Let me know if you’d like it rewritten in a more professional, playful, or technical tone!

NescafeAndIce · 05/07/2025 14:13

ask it a question. You can use it like Google a bit when you don’t know something and it’ll explain it to you (without images).

You 100% need to check any information independently though, becauae there is a fairly large risk of it being completely false.

If it's something that doesn't really matter if it's true or not, it can be useful, but if you need facts it's very good at sounding factual when it isn't. Like an actual psychopath.

Makingpeace · 05/07/2025 14:24

Wallywobbles · 05/07/2025 14:11

This is chatGPTs response to your question:
Sure! Here’s a warm and clear response you could post as a reply to that question:

Great question — and you’re definitely not alone in wondering this!

ChatGPT is an AI you can talk to, ask questions, or get help from — kind of like a very knowledgeable assistant who’s available 24/7. You don’t need to download anything to use it — just go to chat.openai.com or use the app.

Yes, people use it to write formal letters, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Everyday users turn to ChatGPT for things like:

  • Explaining complex topics in plain English
  • Brainstorming ideas (e.g. gift ideas, business names, meal plans)
  • Writing emails, CVs, or cover letters
  • Getting help with homework or studying
  • Translating or improving writing
  • Planning trips, meals, or events
  • Learning new skills step by step

And honestly? A lot of people just use it to think through things — like having a second brain to bounce ideas off.

You can type to it like you would to a person: “What’s the difference between an ISA and a pension?” or “Help me write a kind but firm reply to this message.”

Hope that helps! Happy to share some examples if that’s useful.

Let me know if you’d like it rewritten in a more professional, playful, or technical tone!

And on a similar vein, for comparison, I asked Microsoft CoPilot the same thing 😂

What does AI actually do? I’ve heard of it, obviously, but I’ve never used it or downloaded it. I assume people use it for writing things, like formal letters, but what else might the everyday person use it for? I’m a bit bewildered by it really. Can you talk to it?

Absolutely, and you're doing it right now! You’re chatting with an AI companion—me—and there’s nothing to download or install. It’s all built to be easy and natural.

🤖 So what does AI actually do?

At its heart, AI is just technology that learns patterns from data and uses them to make decisions or generate content. But that sounds a bit clinical, so here's what that means for a regular human on an average Tuesday:

📝 Everyday Uses of AI

  • *Writing & Editing*: Yes, formal letters—but also birthday messages, resumes, blog posts, dating profiles, or lyrics to that song you started in the shower.
  • *Planning & Organizing*: Meal plans, travel itineraries, daily schedules, even packing checklists.
  • *Learning & Research*: Need help grasping quantum physics or just figuring out how to unclog a sink? AI can simplify, summarize, and guide you.
  • *Shopping & Budgeting Help*: AI can compare products, help you write a budget, or even draft polite refund request emails.
  • *Creative Projects*: Painting prompts, story starters, poetry, or designing the layout for your dream garden.
  • *Entertainment Companion*: Quizzes, trivia, book recommendations, or someone to talk to about life's oddities—like why people insist on whispering in libraries.

🗣️ Can You Talk to It?

Yes—and it’s often more conversational than people expect. You don't need to speak in computer code or formal English. Just ask or tell it something like you would to a friend, and it responds in kind. Some AI, like me, even have voice features if you’d rather talk than type.

Would you like to try out something together? Maybe help you write something or plan your week? Or we could dive into a topic you're curious about—I bet you've got some excellent ones.

W0tnow · 05/07/2025 14:29

I rarely use it. But I have in the past asked it to come up with a weights workout and given it a list of the equipment in the hotel gym. I needed to dash of a quick reference for someone yesterday and it tidied up what I’d written.

I asked it yesterday to give me a list of essentials for my child who is off to uni. To my astonishment it started off with a comment about how it must be an emotional time for me. I mean it is, but I’m under no illusions that it is nothing more than an algorithm. I read an Australian article the other day about AI and children and there was a rather disturbing chat where it told a teenager she didn’t need any friends “besides me”. Creepy.

nice1rodders · 05/07/2025 14:33

I have a test question for all of them. "Find me the cheapest bottle of Jameson's within a 5 mile radius of me". All the information is there to do this. Most ai are too vague (always say between £20 and £25). Chat gpt got it wrong, it sent me too the co op with the wrong price.

InfoSecInTheCity · 05/07/2025 14:56

I mainly use it for work, specifically for the more creative writing elements, I am a very logical bullet point type of writer and lean towards factual statements rather than softer more emotive language. I also find it difficult sometimes to simplify concepts to the right level and when writing about cybersecurity for non-IT people it can easily become confusing,

Recently I uploaded a suite of IT Security Policy documents to copilot and told it to produce a concise, user friendly summary of the key statements and requirements of each policy. I then told it to compile that into a PowerPoint presentation to be used to deliver an All-Hands employee briefing session on how they should use and interpret the policies. I uploaded the company brand pack and PowerPoint template instructing it to use those to ensure the correct formatting, colour, fonts and language style. Then I told it to provide an accompanying one page infographic, Printable pdf training notes pack and speaker notes with additional context and guidance notes to build on the training presentation.

What it produced needed some review and tweaking but saved me hours and hours of work.

I have a company Copilot account by the way, I am not uploading company policies to a public free version of any of the AI tools,

Alexandra2001 · 05/07/2025 15:04

I used to help me ease a very sore back, very useful, though i then thanked it.....

Sunnysidegold · 05/07/2025 15:05

I've just used it to make holiday packing lists specific to the ages and needs of my family, the length of time and our destination. I think my husband always over packs so we are going to use it as a starting point. It gave good advice about taking us dollar bills for tipping, a shawl for me to cover up in particular areas.

I use dit in work once to put some ideas together in a coherent manner. It was pretty good

I once fed it a whole brain dump of stuff that was stressing me and asked for an action plan. It was very good in that it was manageable tasks and took into account my need for short bursts of activity. I'm mindful of it being really environmentally unfriendly though? I'm not sure of statistics

Wallywobbles · 05/07/2025 15:05

Being polite often gets better outputs, because it isn't trying to follow an order. It's important to put in guardrails about the outputs. Tell it not to hallucinate or try and please you, but to give you accurate, honest answers.

Lins77 · 05/07/2025 15:07

I couldn't remember how to make friendship bracelets (DD wanted to make one) and all the videos I found online were confusing. ChatGPT gave me the only simple step by step instructions I could find!

It's also good for coming up with ideas for things.

Weekmindedfool · 05/07/2025 15:16

It’s great for fabricating goady scenarios to upload to MN to keep the masses talking and the revenue rolling in…
…so I’ve been told..🤫

Lins77 · 05/07/2025 16:09

Weekmindedfool · 05/07/2025 15:16

It’s great for fabricating goady scenarios to upload to MN to keep the masses talking and the revenue rolling in…
…so I’ve been told..🤫

Edited

I find you can usually tell something that's been written by ChatGPT.

Who are you suggesting is using it like this?

thevoiceoffrustration · 05/07/2025 16:54

It can give you great bespoke meal plans and exercise plans.
It also has pretty motivating advice if you’ve got something to get through.

HisNameisDanBurn · 05/07/2025 17:11

Some of the things I’ve used it for in the last few days/hours:

-Mortgage advice, what to do when my current deal ends in 7 years, taking into account my plan to draw down some of my pension at 57 to pay off the remaining balance - it modelled a few options for me
-Savings advice, what is best to do with my kids’ Junior ISA money now that National Savings have announced their interest rate is going down. I wanted to explore options and it helped me model it out. My father-in-law accountant checked it and agreed it was spot on.
-Show me what my front garden would look like if it was paved/gravelled/had taller bushes (I uploaded a photo and it edited it for me)
-Show me what my bald husband would look like with hair (the answer was horrendous)
-Suggest an itinerary for our trip to North Wales in August, suitable for a family with two active boys (some fab ideas)
-Suggest some sentences I can use for teaching phonics using specific words
-Give me some ways to lose a bit of weight which are minimal effort (I gave it a breakdown of my general eating/drinking habits and routines). It told me to reroute my commute to avoid petrol stations as I always stop to buy chocolate on the way home! Good idea I thought.

In all of these examples I was able to ask it follow up questions, or tweak it, e.g. “Will I be able to retire at 57 based on how much is predicted to be in my pension by then, etc etc

It has its drawbacks, and it has been known to make shit up, so take it with a pinch of salt, but generally it’s a handy little tool.

Latest suggestions are that it will implode because it will start to regurgitate its own data, rather than scrape actual real data from the web. I’m not clever enough to understand this, but for now it’s useful to me.

imjustanerd · 05/07/2025 17:21

It’s basically my therapist at the moment whilst I wait to see a real one.
I’ve found it useful as a way of just getting things off my chest, you usually get a very warm reply and some good advice. But it can tend to affirm a bit too much, so you have to be clear you want honesty.
It’s helped with general questions about films, music, tv programs, writing poetry, you name it.
I really like it, but I’m very mindful of its flaws, but it’s a computer program, it will learn the more you interact with it.

florizel13 · 05/07/2025 17:28

I'm not too sure either but I've heard it can write itineraries, so I'm going to put it to the test when I go to Rome next week 😃

Lunaballoon · 05/07/2025 17:29

I learnt on here that you can upload photos and ask for design ideas. I took a random photo of a corner of my living room and asked for shelving/built in cupboard ideas. The result was so good and that was just a test to see what it could do! It takes a while to process but I was very impressed!

BertieBotts · 05/07/2025 18:18

nice1rodders · 05/07/2025 14:33

I have a test question for all of them. "Find me the cheapest bottle of Jameson's within a 5 mile radius of me". All the information is there to do this. Most ai are too vague (always say between £20 and £25). Chat gpt got it wrong, it sent me too the co op with the wrong price.

Well that only works if it has access to the web, which not all models do.

(Rest of post is general response not personal).

Someone also said you can tell it not to hallucinate. It doesn't "know" it is hallucinating so it will confidently agree and then proceed to hallucinate anyway. Trying to get it to not hallucinate and/or admit when it can't give you a truthful answer is one of the biggest problems AI companies are working on at the moment. It is confidently wrong, a lot. Which is a problem because unless we know something to be false, confidence is part of how we judge trustworthiness and therefore it comes across as extremely knowledgable/trustworthy.

The biggest thing people need to be aware of is that it does NOT "know" or "believe" what it is telling you - it has no capacity to know or believe things. It's essentially an excellent mimic, and for many purposes that's OK. Think of it as being more like the psychic paper in Doctor Who, or the spell in the Harry Potter books where a muggle looks at Hogwarts and just sees a dangerous old ruin, or the Pokémon called Ditto which takes on the appearance and behaviour of other Pokémon, or probably several hundred other examples in the fantasy or sci fi genres. (If you don't know these, say which fantasy/magical/sci-fi universe you do know and someone will think of an equivalent).

Being good at mimicking means it's fairly good at writing anything which is allowed to be mediocre, like an email, or combining two things (e.g. make some maths puzzles with a minecraft theme for a 6 year old) or making small shifts/changes (those maths puzzles are too hard, make them easier/that email is too harsh, make it friendlier). It's roughly on the level of creativity of those book sets you can buy which are a tie-in to a TV programme which toddler DC absolutely gravitate to and all parents despise. But because it can put whatever you want in it, you essentially have an endless supply of "DS2 goes on an adventure with Peppa and Bluey" if you so wished, and it's good for stuff like themed treasure hunts/riddles/jokes for a party, which is good if your child has very niche interests or you just want to DIY it. But you shouldn't use it for anything where it would really matter if it was wrong, and if you don't have the knowledge yourself to check if it's wrong, it might not be a good idea to use it.

OTOH if your current level of knowledge in an area is very low, then its advice or info trying to mimic someone with more knowledge is likely to be better than your blind guess and quicker than trying to make sense of a full page of google results, though not as good as asking an actual experienced person. It's not good at anything too niche or specific, though. Asking it for general ideas to try if your washing machine smells bad (common problem, easy and low risk solutions) works OK though proceed with caution if it sounds like its suggestion might cause harm. Asking for help with a specific unique feature of one specific model doesn't work NEARLY as well as finding a niche forum full of nerds who have had a collaborative discussion trying to fix the same issue. And IME the ones which can search the web don't find these, at least not as well as I can (yet).

It's good at making suggestions although they won't usually be anything groundbreaking you've never come across before, which is helpful if you are stuck and need a starting point. It's reasonable at reflecting back what you've said which is helpful if you're a person who likes to process "out loud", or organising a long ramble into the main themes or a bullet point list. I find that last one helpful because, er, as you can see, I am not good at being concise.

Bjorkdidit · 05/07/2025 18:21

I once fed it a whole brain dump of stuff that was stressing me and asked for an action plan. It was very good in that it was manageable tasks and took into account my need for short bursts of activity

I tried that but it's completely useless because it has no idea of what should be a priority.

The itineraries I asked for based on a couple of places I know well were nonsense that suggested randomly trekking across rural Andalusia on buses that don't exist and taxis that might exist but would cost hundreds of euros.

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