The ability of the new AI tool ChatGPT to instantly answer complex questions has sparked both excitement and concern. People discovered many ways it can make their lives easier in the days following its release, including five that stand out above the rest.
ChatGPT is a chat-based tool developed by the OpenAI research lab that answers questions in a conversational manner. Its natural language capabilities will delight anyone who has had to rephrase questions to Siri or Alexa. The AI, which was trained on vast amounts of text available on the internet, only knows about information until 2021. However, it contains a wealth of information on both nitty-gritty details and broad concepts. Some educators are upset about this, but as long as you use it carefully, it can be useful.
To be clear, ChatGPT is not a perfect replacement for conducting your own research. ChatGPT can answer questions and explain complex concepts, but because of the possibility of inaccuracy, StackOverflow has temporarily banned ChatGPT-generated software.
People are thinking big about how an advanced AI chatbot can help you, from tackling your to-do list to possibly feeding you the best responses to get out of a traffic ticket. Here are some excellent ways to use ChatGPT if you want to save time on some tasks and aren’t cheating on your English Lit paper.
Use a chatbot to save money.
A GPT-powered bot could lower your bills in a matter of weeks. DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder tweeted that the company is developing a Chrome extension based on ChatGPT’s tech foundation to negotiate lower bills from internet providers, hospitals, and other entities. Closed beta testing will begin in mid-December, followed by an open beta in the first week of January.
DoNotPay has been lowering bills for years, but its rules-based model could only pick fights in places where users could submit online complaint forms.
DoNotPay can negotiate back-and-forth with any service that has a chat for customer service after integrating the conversational tech behind ChatGPT, broadening the range of bills that can be challenged to include medical bills, credit reports, and landlord-tenant disputes.
“You can tell the bot, ‘Go get me a refund for poor in-flight Wi-Fi,’ and it’ll save your personal information and send [the complaint],” Browder explained . He believes that the more natural language of the requests will be perceived as less suspicious than the rigid form letters DoNotPay had previously sent, allowing it to challenge more discerning – and expensive – institutions such as hospitals. The GPT-powered extension will be available for free during its beta testing period before being integrated into DoNotPay’s current bill-challenging subscription service, which costs $36 every three months. Bots doing all the tedious legwork to get you better deals and lower bills, similar to Google’s Duplex AI making voice calls for you, could be the future.
Create a diet and exercise program.
Changing your diet and developing an exercise routine both require effort. To make things easier, Alex Cohen, senior director of product at Carbon Health, used ChatGPT to create a health-improvement plan that included a daily calorie target, exercise recommendations, a weeklong menu plan, and even a shopping list for all the necessary ingredients. In an informative thread, he tweeted his method:
Cohen broke down his plan into steps, calculating his personal health metrics, requesting meals that would meet his daily caloric and nutritional needs, requesting a shopping list, and finally requesting an exercise plan that would meet his needs. ChatGPT is not a replacement for a physician and dietitian who can tailor a plan to your specific needs and physiology, as the tool will warn you if you use Cohen’s search terms again. However, it is a simple way to create a health plan blueprint that you can review yourself or bring to a health care professional.
Create a grocery list for the coming week’s meals.
A variation on the previous point is worth mentioning for anyone planning a week’s worth of meals for a large group. First, request a menu from ChatGPT, specifying how many people you’ll be cooking for and whether you prefer dinners, breakfasts, or lunches. Include any dietary restrictions and preferences. Give us how many days you want dining ideas, and we’ll send you a list of meals. Next, request a shopping list for those meals. If you want exact amounts, you’ll need to fine-tune your request. For example, you could request the total amount of ingredients for all of the meals listed. GPT generates a shopping list with the number of cans, ounces, pounds, and cups of each ingredient required for a week’s worth of meals.
Make a bedtime story for your children.
ChatGPT-generated prose hasn’t yet topped bestseller lists, owing in part to a lack of creative style. However, the tool can generate a passable bedtime story for children by concocting simple plots and language from simple prompts. For example, I selected a cat who desired to travel to space, and ChatGPT told me about Max, who clawed his way past many obstacles to achieve his dreams among the stars. Eric Zelikman, a machine learning graduate student at Stanford, proposed using ChatGPT to generate a bedtime story and then feeding that text into OpenAI’s DALL-E image-generating tool for illustrations. It will not displace traditionally published children’s books. However, if you are short on time or are away from your child’s trove of bedtime stories, generating one using OpenAI’s tools can be useful.
Preparation for an interview
As entrepreneur Seth Bannon tweeted, if you need to prepare for an exciting source interview, you can ask ChatGPT to generate some thought-provoking questions. If you’re a journalist, or if you’re grilling someone on stage at an industry conference, preparing for a job interview, or preparing for a dinner with someone you want to impress, this could come in handy. You can even use it as a chat partner to practice what you’re going to say by setting up mock conversations. You can also tell it to respond in different languages or translate specific phrases.
You could also use it to help polish your cover letters and emails for a professional appearance. ChatGPT isn’t perfect, but with a lot of example copies on the internet to draw from, it can be a competent communicator.