Revolutionising Work and Everyday Life with ChatGPT

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Introduction

ChatGPT is a revolutionary new technology that is making a large impact on society.  The full impact of ChatGPT cannot be fully known at the time of writing this article because of how novel the technology is.  However, what can be said is that since its introduction many industries have been trying to leverage it and increase productivity.  Simultaneously, everyday people are trying to learn to leverage it as well.  Overall, ChatGPT and similar systems are very new and the full impact of how to leverage them will take some more time to fully manifest.  This article is going to explore how ChatGPT can be used for everyday life by exploring a few use cases.

What is ChatGPT?       

Before we begin, it is important to understand what ChatGPT is and what it isn’t.  To begin ChatGPT is in a lay sense a super advanced chatbot.  More specifically, ChatGPT is known as a generative AI that uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to create a dialog between a user and itself.  ChatGPT and similar systems are what are known as Large Language Models (LLMs).  In short, for AI models to work they have to be trained using data.  To train LLMs engineers use vast amounts such as books, articles, journals, and so on.  The result is a system like ChatGPT that has a vast knowledge base on many different subjects.  Before we can explore how to use ChatGPT for everyday life we need to explore how NOT to use ChatGPT. 

How not to use ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is very powerful and can be used for many different things; however, is important to understand that ChatGPT is not a sage nor infallible.  Remember ChatGPT only knows about what it was trained on.  This means if the information it was taught was wrong or outdated so too will be the response it provides.  This means that as of writing this article ChatGPT cannot and should not be used as a replacement for humans.  Even with the answer ChatGPT gives, a decent level of domain knowledge is still required properly format and use its response.  As such, it is important to take suggestions with a certain amount of skepticism.  The best way to think of ChatGPT is as an extremely smart friend with a wide range of knowledge.  Though that friend may be very knowledgeable they can and will be wrong from time to time.  With that how does one use ChatGPT?

How to use ChatGPT for everyday life?

Using ChatGPT starts with what is called a prompt.  A prompt can be thought of as a query that the user feeds into ChatGPT.  This prompt is kind of like a Google search.  It will be a statement that asks ChatGPT a question or to perform a certain task.  Since ChatGPT used NLP, the prompt does not have to be formatted a certain way nor does it require a specific syntax.  In other words, a prompt can be entered the same way a user would pose the instruction to another person.  However, it is good to provide ChatGPT will enough information to adequately describe the problem.  An example, of a prompt is as follows:

How can ChatGPT be used for everyday life?

Once the prompt is run ChatGPT will produce text with suggestions, answers, programming software, or whatever was asked for.  That output that is produced is called a response which will have the answer to the request/question. 

There are a lot of ways ChatGPT can be used for everyday life.  In terms of professional life, ChatGPT can make an excellent assistant.  For most “text-based” jobs, that is jobs that don’t require design such as drawing diagrams, ChatGPT can be an excellent assistant.  For example, suppose a programmer needs a small piece of software for a project, assume they need a SQL query that can pull all the rows between two dates.  The user could use a prompt like the following:

Write a SQL query that will pull all rows between January 3 and March 31.

This prompt will produce the following response:

To pull all rows between January 3 and March 31 from a table, you'll need to use the WHERE clause to filter the results based on the date column. Assuming you have a date column named "date_column" in your table, here's the SQL query:

sqlCopy code
 
SELECT *
FROM your_table
WHERE date_column >= '2023-01-03' AND date_column <= '2023-03-31';

Replace "your_table" with the actual name of your table, and "date_column" with the name of the column that contains the dates you want to filter. The query will select all rows where the "date_column" is on or after January 3, 2023, and on or before March 31, 2023.

For those that are not familiar with SQL, the prompt produced a simple query with generic placeholders that will pull the correct data out of a database. 

Not everyone is a programmer, so how could a non-programmer use ChatGPT as an assistant?  One area in which ChatGPT can be used is by composing emails.  Suppose a salesperson needs to inform Tom, their boss, that a $1 million deal was closed today via email.  They could use a prompt like the following:

Write Tom an email saying that the deal with Company X went through, and we made $1 million.

The response would be something along the lines of:

Subject: Successful Deal with Company X - $1 Million Revenue Achieved

Hi Tom,

I hope this email finds you well. I am thrilled to share some exciting news with you! The deal with Company X has successfully gone through, and I am delighted to inform you that we have made an astounding $1 million in revenue from this collaboration.

This achievement wouldn't have been possible without the hard work and dedication of our entire team. It reflects the trust and confidence our partners have in our capabilities, and I believe it marks a significant milestone for our company's growth and success.

I want to express my gratitude to you for your valuable contributions and expertise that played a crucial role in making this deal a reality. Your efforts have been commendable, and I am truly grateful for your commitment to the success of this venture.

Let's take a moment to celebrate this triumph together. Your exceptional skills and commitment to excellence have made this accomplishment possible, and I am genuinely proud to have you as part of our team.

Looking forward to even more prosperous ventures in the future. Once again, congratulations to you and the entire team!

Best regards,
[Your Name] 
[Your Title/Position] 
[Company Name] 
[Email] 
[Phone Number]

In this case, all the users would have to do is proofread the email, copy it, and send it.  Now, for applications such as this proofreading is very important.  As stated before, ChatGPT is not a mind reader nor a sage, as such it may produce emails with wrong information, illogical wording, or anything else.  So, it’ll pay to read the message before sending it. 

Learning Tool

A very powerful use of ChatGPT is as a learning tool.  For example, students can use this tool to help them master a new subject, generate practice problems, and even check answers to an extent.  Assume the user needs a few extra practice problems for their English homework, they could enter a prompt like the following:

Generate some grammar practice problems for a 1st year English class

Which would yield the following output:

Of course! Here are some grammar practice problems suitable for a 1st-year English class:

1. Subject-Verb Agreement: Choose the correct verb form that agrees with the subject in each sentence: a) The cat (purr/purrs) when it is happy. b) My friend and I (is/are) going to the movies tonight. c) Neither the students nor the teacher (understands/understand) the assignment.

2. Pronoun Usage: Select the appropriate pronoun to complete each sentence: a) She invited Sarah and (I/me) to the party. b) My sister and (her/she) are going shopping. c) The book is for (he/him) and his brother.

3. Articles (a/an/the): Insert the correct article (a, an, the, or no article) in each sentence: a) Can you pass me (a/an) apple, please? b) I need to buy (the) new shoes for the dance. c) My friend has (no article) car.

4. Prepositions: Choose the correct preposition to complete each sentence: a) We arrived (in/on/at) the airport fifteen minutes early. b) The cat is sleeping (under/below/above) the table. c) She's going to the store (by/with/for) her mom.

5. Verb Tenses: Identify the correct verb tense used in each sentence: a) They (will be/was) studying for the exam all night. b) By the time we arrived, the party (had started/has started). c) I (am/was) watching a movie right now.

6. Adjective vs. Adverb: Decide whether the word in parentheses should be an adjective or adverb in the sentence: a) She sings (beautiful/beautifully). b) The (happy/happily) children played in the park. c) The (quick/quickly) fox jumped over the fence.

7. Negation: Add the necessary negative word to each sentence: a) I have (no/not) seen him today. b) She does (not/none) like coffee. c) We will (not/none) be attending the party.

8. Passive Voice: Rewrite the following sentences in the passive voice: a) The chef cooked the meal. b) The teacher is explaining the lesson. c) The storm destroyed the old building.

9. Comparative and Superlative Forms: Complete each sentence with the correct comparative or superlative form of the adjective: a) This book is (interesting/more interesting/most interesting) than the last one. b) She is (tall/taller/tallest) than her sister. c) It was the (big/biggest/bigger) cake at the party.

10. Reported Speech: Rewrite the following sentences using reported speech: a) Mary said, "I am going to the store." b) "I will call you later," said John. c) "They have arrived," she said.

These grammar practice problems aim to reinforce essential grammar rules and concepts, helping 1st-year English students develop their language skills and proficiency.

As can be seen, ChatGPT generated a number of questions that one would usually find in an English 101 class.  Now, if the user wanted a more specific answer that could reword the prompt to accommodate. 

ChatGPT is also a great teaching tool as well.  Teachers can also use this tool to generate lesson plans, write intros for learning modules, generate problems, and more.  Overall, ChatGPT can be used as an excellent tool for academia in general.

Now, it is important to remember that ChatGPT is not all-knowing.  It can only generate responses based on the data that it was trained on.  This means if the user is asking questions about a subject where there is little or no publicly available data the response probably isn’t going to be of the highest quality.  For example, if someone asked

How do I build a working time machine?

They’re going to get the following:

Building a working time machine, as depicted in science fiction, is currently beyond our technological capabilities and goes against the known laws of physics. Time travel, as popularly imagined, involves traveling backward or forward in time, similar to how we move through space.

As of my last update in September 2021, time travel remains a concept explored mainly in theoretical physics, and no practical time machine has been built or proven to be possible. Several theories, such as the theory of relativity, suggest that time travel could be theoretically feasible under certain conditions, but these ideas are still purely theoretical and have not been put into practice.

It's important to remember that building a time machine would present enormous scientific, technological, and ethical challenges. It could raise paradoxes, such as the "grandfather paradox," where a time traveler could potentially alter past events and create inconsistencies in history.

As of now, time travel remains a fascinating topic in science fiction and theoretical physics, but it is not something that can be practically accomplished with our current understanding and technology. The scientific community continues to explore the nature of time and the universe, but building a working time machine as portrayed in movies and books is not yet a reality.

ChatGPT gave some general information on time travel but unfortunately, it didn’t generate any schematics.  Again, this goes back to ChatGPT not being a sage as it only knows what it was “taught”.  Since there is no data on how to build a working time machine ChatGPT could not fully answer the prompt. 

Now, If one looks at the English question prompt above, one will notice that practice questions were quite broad.  It is common to have to “dig” with ChatGPT.  In other words, a person may have to refine the queriers to get what they need.  To get some practice try re-wording the prompt to generate practice questions for only passive writing.  

Summary

ChatGPT is a tool, and like any other tool, what it’s used for is up to the user.  As was seen in this article, ChatGPT is an excellent tool for helping a person through their day by generating software, emails, and so on.  ChatGPT can also be used as a great learning or teaching device to help students and teachers generate practice problems, create lesson plans, and so much more.  However, as was stated so many numerous times.  Unless ChatGPT has been trained on something it does not know about it.  This means that asking it things like how to build a time machine or domain specific concepts aren’t going to return quality responses.  Also, even if ChatGPT has been trained on the prompt, it may not always generate a quality response.  No matter the use case, the response should be vetted for accuracy.  This may mean doing a little extra research with the response given, testing the output, or whatever needs to be done to verify the response. 

Overall, ChatGPT at the time of writing this article is less than a year old.  This means that the full implication of using ChatGPT are not fully understood.  Also, how to fully leverage ChatGPT is not understood yet either.  What can be said is that ChatGPT and similar LLM systems will probably be the next Google.  In terms of everyday use, the only true inhibitors are the user's imagination and the data that was used to train ChatGPT.

Author Bio

M.T. White has been programming since the age of 12. His fascination with robotics flourished when he was a child programming microcontrollers such as Arduino. M.T. currently holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics, and a master's degree in software engineering, and is currently working on an MBA in IT project management. M.T. is currently working as a software developer for a major US defense contractor and is an adjunct CIS instructor at ECPI University. His background mostly stems from the automation industry where he programmed PLCs and HMIs for many different types of applications. M.T. has programmed many different brands of PLCs over the years and has developed HMIs using many different tools.

Author of the book: Mastering PLC Programming