The beauty of Chat GPT is in its simplicity for end users. The average person knows how to type, ask questions and read answers in plain English. It’s more intuitive and quicker to use than traditional web search, and the performance blows all prior chat bots out of the water.
Stay aware of new Chat GPT features
One of the most amazing things about Chat GPT and Generative AI is the pace at which it is improving. Chat GPT 4 followed up the release of Chat GPT 3.5 only after a few months. With GPT 4 the service was greatly improved. Then a few weeks later, OpenAI released Chat GPT plugins which greatly extend the ability of Chat GPT to pull in high quality information from different sources and will allow it to answer questions about a wider range of information with a much greater degree of accuracy.
Be Curious and Ask Follow Up Questions
Chat GPT’s answers are only as good as the questions being answered. It can be a bit of a challenge to ask Chat GPT the right question to get the desired answer. This is especially true when you’re asking Chat GPT to write a Python program, or create a Power BI Dax formula or complete other technical tasks.
Going in with an open mind and asking Chat GPT follow-up questions will help you get the answer you need quicker. Sometimes it can take a few tries to get to the answer that you want by adding parameters and clarifying your exact needs.
Know when to use Chat GPT, Bing or Alternatives
The number of Chat GPT competitors is set to explode. OpenAI Chat GPT, Quora Poe, Google Bard, Microsoft Bing are some of the early big players in the AI Chat Bot space.
Chat GPT is a leader in the space and can be credited with being the first AI Chat Bot to bring massive amounts of attention to the space and being truly useful for the average person.
Google Bard, Quora Poe, and Microsoft Bing all have slightly different approaches, and as they improve and become more widely available, you may find that one fits your style better than another. For example, Microsoft Bing Chat is powered by OpenAI GPT-4 but has been modified to provide more concise answers and is trained with up to date data and can provide information on current events.
Ask Chat GPT to Explain Like it Would a Child
You can prompt Chat GPT to write articles, blogs and text in the voice of different popular writers. If you are researching complicated topics, you can also ask Chat GPT to explain the topic as if it were talking to a child. It will simplify the response in an easy-to-understand way.
In this example, we asked Chat GPT to explain Quantum Physics like it was talking to a child which makes a very difficult topic to understand significantly easier and more approachable for a wider audience.
Copy and Paste Error Messages into Chat GPT
If you are using Chat GPT to walk you through a technical problem, such as writing a computer program, installing Python or various other tasks you may run into computer errors.
You can copy and paste error messages into Chat GPT and it will guide you through the common ways to fix the error. If you are having Chat GPT write a computer program for you, you can copy and paste the error message and Chat GPT will adjust the code and re-write it for you in an attempt to correct the error.
Trust but Verify Responses from Chat GPT
At the end of the day Chat GPT is only going to be as accurate as the data being fed into it. One of the primary sources of information is the internet. There are a wide range of different opinions and sometimes completely incorrect information on the internet.
Chat GPT is tasked with deciphering this sometimes conflicting information and presents it to you as if it were fact. It is a best practice to validate the information provided to you, and to have a healthy level of skepticism when evaluating the information being provided to you.
Ask Chat GPT for More than You Need and Edit
With the introduction of generative AI, the subset of artificial intelligence that chat bots like Chat GPT fall under, creating content is incredibly fast and inexpensive. For example, you can ask a computer to suggest a tag line for a product that you are selling.
Instead of having Chat GPT give you one potential option, ask it to write 30 or more. This gives you the ability to pick and choose from a list of potentially great choices. You can also then mix and match, or it can give you ideas of different directions to go with a marketing or ad campaign.
Be Wary of Copying Chat GPT Directly
Because AI content generation is new, it’s like that the internet will become flooded with content. It’s no risk and cheap to create. People do not have to spend much time putting thought into content if a prompt will create paragraphs or pages of information for you.
At some point, we expect that Google or Bing could begin to limit the amount of AI generated content that they link to. It could come in the form of something like a do not follow link, where an article will be tagged as AI generated and de-prioritized from page rankings.
Google and Bing have not announced any specific policies against AI generated content at the time of writing, but as the internet is a primary training source for their bots the risk of AI being trained on AI generated content becomes increasing more likely and could have unforeseen consequences.
Clear Conversation History Regularly
A primary differentiator with Chat GPT is that its answers are aware of the context that questions are being asked. This allows you to ask follow-up questions and reference responses that it has previously given.
If you clear the conversation history or create a new session for each different topic, the chat bot will provide you with better answers. There is a limitation of how much previously conversation that Chat GPT will keep in memory at a given point. Keeping things clear and related to a single topic will allow the chat bot to provide more precise answers.
Pay for Chat GPT-4 and Chat GPT Premium Access
Heavy users of Chat GPT should considering paying for the service. GPT-4 is the fourth version of the software and is significantly improved over Chat GPT-3. This will ultimately save you a lot of time by getting the answers you need quicker.
Chat GPT has been so incredibly popular that the servers hosting the service are not as reliable as you would hope. Paying for the service gives you priority access and limits the amount of downtime and service disruptions that you are likely to face.
It’s worth noting that if you want to stay on a free version, there are alternatives like using Bing Chat powered by GPT-4 that do not cost anything to use. Though there are some differences in the types of answers that it will provide.
Recognize that Chat GPT will Improve Over Time
Some people have already written off Chat GPT and similar technologies as being useless. They argue that because AI driven chat bots cannot answer the questions and handle the tasks that they want, then the entire category of tools are no good.
We argue that the technology will continue to get better. The original iPhone was only a shadow of what an iPhone can do today. The technology behind Chat GPT today will take a similar trajectory as the evolution of the iPhone. It will get better with time, become more useful, and extend the amount of functionality that it offers.
Use Chat GPT to Improve Your Skills to Reduce Reliance
Our final point is that Chat GPT is an incredible tool. It enables people to complete tasks in minutes that otherwise would have taken hours or days. However, it still takes some time to prompt Chat GPT to answer questions and figuring out how to prompt it in just the right way to get the answer that you want can be difficult.
For example, if you had to prompt Chat GPT every time you wanted to write a Microsoft Excel formula, it could take a lot of time when compared to using keyboard shortcuts. This makes it important to not only prompt it to answer questions but invest some time into learning the why and how to do different tasks. It will ultimately save you a lot of time even when compared to using Chat GPT in some cases.