HT TECH wants to start sending you push notifications. Click allow to subscribe

How Should You Talk to ChatGPT? A User’s Guide

Getting useful answers from the AI bot requires letting go of some of our human intuitions about how to communicate.

By: BLOOMBERG
Updated on: Feb 07 2023, 07:34 IST
Know the right way to get specific and honed information from ChatGPT (AP)
Know the right way to get specific and honed information from ChatGPT (AP)

About 100 million people used ChatGPT in the month of January, according to one estimate, which would be the fastest-growing user base ever. Yet I often speak to people who are less than impressed with ChatGPT, citing its mistakes and banalities, and they suggest it is a passing fad.

In response, allow me to offer a short guide to using ChatGPT. It can do many things for you — organize your notes, correct your grammar, work with mathematical symbols. But I will focus on the most basic use: querying it. To use it well, you need to let go of some of your intuitions about talking to humans. ChatGPT is a bot.

You may be interested in

Mobiles Tablets Laptops
7% OFF
Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max
  • Black Titanium
  • 8 GB RAM
  • 256 GB Storage
₹148,900₹159,900
Buy now
23% OFF
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra 5G
  • Green
  • 12 GB RAM
  • 256 GB Storage
₹115,999₹149,999
Buy now
Google Pixel 8 Pro
  • Obsidian
  • 12 GB RAM
  • 128 GB Storage
₹106,998
Check details
Apple iPhone 15 Plus
  • Black
  • 6 GB RAM
  • 128 GB Storage
₹87,900
Check details
21% OFF
Acer Swift Go SFG14 41 NX KG3SI 002 Laptop
  • Pure Silver
  • 8 GB RAM
  • 512 GB SSD
₹58,990₹74,999
Buy now
39% OFF
Acer Aspire 5 A515 57G Laptop
  • Gray
  • 16 GB RAM
  • 512 GB SSD
₹54,949₹89,999
Buy now
22% OFF
Acer Aspire 3 A315 24 NX KDESI 004 Laptop
  • Silver
  • 8 GB RAM
  • 512 GB SSD
₹33,499₹42,999
Buy now
39% OFF
Asus VivoBook 15 X515JA BQ322WS Laptop
  • Transparent Silver
  • 8 GB RAM
  • 512 GB SSD
₹31,490₹51,990
Buy now
34% OFF
Xiaomi Pad 6
  • Mist Blue
  • 6 GB RAM
  • 128 GB Storage
₹26,299₹39,999
Buy now
55% OFF
Lenovo Tab M10 5G
  • Abyss Blue
  • 6 GB RAM
  • 128 GB Storage
₹20,999₹47,000
Buy now
32% OFF
Realme Pad 2
  • Imagination Grey
  • 6 GB RAM
  • 128 GB Storage
₹19,790₹28,999
Buy now
Honor Pad X9
  • Gray
  • 4 GB RAM
  • 128 GB Storage
₹14,999
Check details

If you are talking to a human and he or she doesn’t understand you, you might make your question simpler. That is exactly the wrong tack to take with ChatGPT. You will get a better result by making your question more detailed and complex.

Also read: Looking for a smartphone? To check mobile finder click here.

Ask ChatGPT “What is Marxism?” for example, and you will get a passable answer, probably no better than what you would get by using Wikipedia or Google. Instead, make the question more specific: “Which were the important developments in French Marxism in the second half of the 19th century?” ChatGPT will do much better — and it’s also the kind of question it’s hard to use Google and Wikipedia to answer.

ChatGPT will do better yet if you ask it sequential questions along an evolving line of inquiry. Ask it about the specific French Marxists it cites, what they did, and how they differed from their German counterparts. Keep on going.

ChatGPT does especially well at “compare and contrast.” In essence, ChatGPT needs you to point it in the right direction. A finely honed question gives it more fixed points of reference. You need to set the mood and tone and intellectual level of your question, depending on the kind of answer you want. It’s not unlike trying to steer the conversation at a dinner party. Or, to use another analogy, think of working with ChatGPT as like training a dog.

Another way to hone ChatGPT’s capabilities is to ask it for responses in the voice of a third person. Ask, “What are the costs of inflation?” and you might get answers that aren’t wrong exactly, but neither are they impressive. Instead, try this: “What are the costs of inflation? Please answer using the ideas of Milton Friedman.”

By mentioning Friedman, you have pointed it to a more intelligent corner of the ideas universe. If Friedman isn’t the right guide for you, choose another economist (don’t forget yours truly!). Better yet, ask it to compare and contrast the views of two economists.

To understand this unusual behavior, it helps to know a bit about how these models work. They do not reason, and they do not consult the internet (though they have read the internet previously). Instead, ChatGPT works by trying to predict which words should come next to provide a likely and satisfying answer.

Here is a simple example: If I said, “The Star-Spangled [blank],” you would probably guess the next word is “Banner,” because the US national anthem is called “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and you often hear those words in that order. That challenge is an easy one, but for most questions or prompts the proper sequence isn’t so obvious. ChatGPT needs some guidance from you to set off in the right direction. Act like a dog trainer and let it know what you are looking for.

ChatGPT is most likely to go wrong when it is trying too hard to please you. I have found that it creates associations, affiliations, co-authorships and even marriages that do not exist. I was recently using it with the legal scholar Cass Sunstein, a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist, and we asked it whether the two of us had written a book together. The genius of ChatGPT is that it hit upon exactly the book we might have written, given our overlapping areas of research interest — a book on the philosophical foundations of cost-benefit analysis.

The absurdity is that no such co-authored book exists. Perhaps ChatGPT has been trained on bodies of text where most queries of affiliation are answered in the affirmative, and so to fulfill its task of predicting words well, it will make things up. So while it is wonderful for helping with your workflow or generating ideas, ChatGPT is not good as a fact-checker.

I didn’t use ChatGPT in drafting this column, by the way. If I had, however, I know exactly how I would have phrased my query — and I would have been sure to ask for something in the style of Tyler Cowen.

Catch all the Latest Tech News, Mobile News, Laptop News, Gaming news, Wearables News , How To News, also keep up with us on ,Twitter, Facebook, , and Instagram. For our latest videos, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

First Published Date: 07 Feb, 07:14 IST

Sale

Mobiles Tablets Laptops
4% OFF
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
  • Titanium Black
  • 12 GB RAM
  • 256 GB Storage
₹129,999₹134,999
Buy now
14% OFF
Xiaomi 14
  • Matte Black
  • 12 GB RAM
  • 512 GB Storage
₹68,999₹79,999
Buy now
10% OFF
Apple iPhone 15 Plus
  • Black
  • 6 GB RAM
  • 128 GB Storage
₹72,200₹79,900
Buy now
12% OFF
IQOO 12 5G
  • Legend
  • 12 GB RAM
  • 256 GB Storage
₹52,999₹59,999
Buy now
35% OFF
Xiaomi Pad 6
  • Mist Blue
  • 6 GB RAM
  • 128 GB Storage
₹25,998₹39,999
Buy now
38% OFF
Lenovo Tab M10 5G
  • Abyss Blue
  • 6 GB RAM
  • 128 GB Storage
₹20,999₹34,000
Buy now
38% OFF
Realme Pad 2
  • Imagination Grey
  • 6 GB RAM
  • 128 GB Storage
₹17,999₹28,999
Buy now
57% OFF
Honor Pad X8
  • Blue Hour
  • 3 GB RAM
  • 32 GB Storage
₹8,999₹20,999
Buy now
8% OFF
Asus TUF Gaming A15 FA577XU LP041WS Laptop
  • Jaeger Gray
  • 16 GB RAM
  • 1 TB SSD
₹82,999₹89,999
Buy now
28% OFF
Asus VivoBook Pro 15 M6500RC HN741WS Laptop
  • Quiet Blue
  • 16 GB RAM
  • 512 GB SSD
₹73,990₹102,990
Buy now
17% OFF
Lenovo Legion Slim 5 16APH8 82Y9008MIN Laptop
  • Storm Grey
  • 16 GB RAM
  • 512 GB SSD
₹132,584₹160,080
Buy now
21% OFF
Asus VivoBook Go 15 OLED E1504GA NJ323WS Laptop
  • Green Grey
  • 8 GB RAM
  • 512 GB SSD
₹33,999₹42,999
Buy now
NEXT ARTICLE BEGINS