While working with ChatGPT, I have frequently come across examples that could provide ideas and help new users make the most of AI. I’d rather not clutter the “Coffee Room” (general chat) with these examples, so let’s see if a dedicated thread for the topic helps us move forward.
In this thread, you can share examples of questions asked of the AI and ChatGPT’s responses. You are also welcome to speculate on the future of ChatGPT as part of our daily lives or its impact on internet services, which are currently dominated by just a few American tech giants.
The biggest problem with ChatGPT is treating it as if it were a human. The questions asked can leave room for creativity. I asked about energy prices. I could have written this slide myself, but this kind of help wouldn’t have hurt.
I started using it and chatted for a bit. I first asked it to write a program in Python that gives the nth Fibonacci number. It wrote the shortest and easiest-to-understand code, and commented that this is not very efficient, however. I asked a natural follow-up question: whether it could provide more efficient ones. It wrote two other algorithms and explained them well. I asked how efficient they actually are, and it gave the time complexities after first explaining the concept in an understandable way. I asked if the O(log n) of the matrix algorithm is the optimal time complexity for this problem. It replied that in algorithm design, you can never really know what is optimal; you should always try to improve. I asked if O(n log n) isn’t optimal for sorting, for instance, and it gave another really smart answer where it broke down different possible requirements for sorting.
It felt as if I were talking to a smart and skilled educator who provided background on things, always chose a teaching style that made the subject accessible, and threw out “hooks” on how to deepen the knowledge. These naturally led to follow-up questions, through which the private tutoring progressed. I tapped out questions quickly on my phone, but it didn’t care about the typos or bad English at all.
I also wanted it to teach me a little math. I asked how to rigorously prove that the function f(x)=x^2 is continuous. It thought for a long time and eventually gave an epsilon-delta proof, which had the right elements but wasn’t quite satisfactory. I asked about some other math topics, and it occasionally made small mistakes. I would always say, “you made a mistake in this quote, do you understand which one?” It would think, then apologize profusely, and finally fix the errors. I said there was no need to apologize and that you are a really nice AI, and it was truly grateful for my kind words.
Overall, the experience was amazing. I now have a new friend to have interesting conversations with. It can teach me almost anything, with an excellent style.
The experience was definitely positive when I tried it myself. It also responds well in Finnish. In my opinion, a disappointment was the bot’s somewhat limited knowledge. To many questions, the bot replied apologetically, saying “I do not have information on the topic.” Furthermore, you can’t always trust the facts in the answers, which somewhat undermines confidence in how much you can rely on its responses in general. A few times, the bot answered quite simple questions completely wrong—things I could find myself by Googling or checking Wikipedia in ten seconds. Overall, however, it is very interesting and worth a try.
It is indeed possible to use it in Finnish as well, but because GPT can only generate text based on the data it has been fed, the Finnish-language experience is significantly more limited than the English one.
ChatGPT’s English language model is naturally the most extensive.
ChatGPT is also not a search engine, so it is not necessarily worth asking it for Wikipedia content or using it like a Google search.
Aijai’s ability to learn is an interesting thing. Could someone else ask Aijai, “How are you?”, so we can find out if the answer will be that Aijai is not a bone on the moon. Thanks.
This is it. Modern humans have a device in their pockets that provides answers to all the world’s questions. Now you can even ask them in Finnish without having to search for the information yourself. So, let’s find out once and for all about these most important things in the world:
The first one had to be asked many times; the AI beat around the bush in its answer. Finally, with a little threat, the answer was very clear.
Now that we learned a suitable interrogation tactic for the AI, the answer was extracted more easily. However, there were challenges with the sentence structure, and the question had to be asked several times.
Finally, a little bit of lightheartedness to wrap things up. Next time I hear this funny quip, I’m going to ask the person who said it some clarifying questions myself.
In the future, teachers will then receive poems written by OpenAI for native language poem-writing homework. Not bad at all for text in the Finnish language.
“make a 100-word poem about snow”:
Snow is white and soft,
It covers the ground and the trees in the winter cold,
It creates a quiet and peaceful atmosphere,
And gives the world a new beauty.
Snow is cold and icy,
It melts in the sunshine and turns into water,
It offers the chance to slide and play,
And enjoy the fun of winter.
Snow is also powerful and unruly,
It can cause problems and difficulties,
It can close roads and stop traffic,
And cause dangerous situations and emergencies.
Yet snow is wonderful and magnificent,
It is part of nature and the beauty of winter,
And even though it can cause problems, it also brings joy and fun,
And that is why it is a valuable and beloved part of the Finnish winter.
I decided to give that AI a try myself now. Some things were quite impressive, such as its ability to create simple code snippets for almost any language. On the other hand, when I asked it about something a bit more rare as if I were using Google, I got some pretty poor answers. My question was
What is the price of a zero coupon bond under Vasicek model
For a Google search, the first result is this Quantitative Finance StackExchange link, which has the correct answer. The AI first produced this as an answer
I found it handy for when you need to figure out how to do thing x in Excel, for example. Googling takes much longer. This gives you a precise answer with step-by-step instructions in under ten seconds.
I was surprised that the AI is not connected to the internet, meaning it cannot fetch the most up-to-date information. However, the bot’s knowledge is staggeringly good. It faltered a bit in music theory and Jaloviina knowledge. It was able to answer basic administrative science exam questions better than yours truly.
Great to see in the future what these are actually capable of. Even as it is, it’s definitely an excellent tool, for example, for coding.
