What is ChatGPT & How Do I Use It?

ChatGPT is a chatbot that was developed by OpenAI and which uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to answer in a human like way to questions. Trained on a wide range of internet text, ChatGPT can create text that makes sense, is accurate, and hard to tell if it was human or AI written. 

How Does ChatGPT Work?

ChatGPT uses a technique called "unsupervised learning." This means it gains it's knowledge or answers from any existing text on the internet. Over time it gets better at understanding the information it is learning, its grammar and meanings. It predicts the next word in a sentence based on the words that are in front, repeating this millions of times to keep learning how to create content which flows naturally.  

There is a procedure for using ChatGPT:

1. Start with a prompt - this is a sentence or a few words that set the way in which the interaction will go. A specific question such as 'What is SEO?" is a good example of a prompt.

2. Context Management - ChatGPT will remember the prompts and responses in your conversation and keep on task. This is  useful for when you want to provide additional information or ask follow-up questions.

3. Experiment - Give different prompts or questions a go. See if you get answers which are more suitable and meet your needs better. 

4. Be very specific - If you want a highly specific response from ChatGPT, then make sure your question or prompt reflects this.

What Can ChatGPT Do?

As well as answering questions, ChatGPT can:

• Create a list of blog topics
• Create emails, newsletters, website content 
• Write cover letters
• Translate written text into another language
• Summarise big pieces of text into manageable chunks
• Explain complex topics
• Make up original jokes
• Write a CV
• Solve maths problems
• Write, explain and debug code
• Write scripts
• Play games
• Create art

Pros and Cons of Using ChatGPT

Let's take a look at both sides of using ChatGPT, starting with the pros:

• Speed - ChatGPT can almost instantly respond to your prompts and questions
• Writing help - it can help you to write a good title, a blog or content outline
• Research - it can do some research for you on your choice of topics
• Versatile - it can write many different things, such as poems, emails and language translation
• 使いやすい - simply type in your prompt and away you go

Is ChatGPT something you are willing to try? Or will you be avoiding it, preferring the human touch?