The new technology is terrifying…and terrific!
Taking ChatGPT Out for a Spin
Today, I spent about an hour fooling around with ChatGPT for the first time. (Here’s the excellent YouTube tutorial I started with:)
Then I wrote a newsletter about it.
The newsletter briefly describes what ChatGPT is, gives a short list of things it does, and ends with the Million Dollar Question, “Did ChatGPT help me write this?”
The Envelope, Please…
The answer is Yes. I used ChatGPT to help me write the newsletter in three ways:
- I asked it for a self-definition (“What is ChatGPT?”) that I edited/expanded.
- I sent it to find a quote for me. (It found the perfect one.)
- I requested a phrase to substitute for “The $64Million Question.”
Each of these “use cases” was a chance to learn more about ChatGPT, following this advice from the tutorial above:
Be very specific and very clear with prompts; give a lot of feedback; and be patient.
This is tame ChatGPT stuff, but I was pleased with the results, and with how easy it was to pick up basic principles.
And for those who want to know, I used the free version, not the more powerful version that you can get for $20/month as I write this.
Behind the Magic Curtain
If you’re interested in exactly how these interactions unfolded, keep reading. My prompts (the questions I asked ChatGPT) probably look clumsy to more experienced users, but they got me where I needed to go:
Getting a Definition
Although this seemed wildly circular, I asked ChatGPT,
What is ChatGPT?
The three paragraph response that I got from it was too technical for my purposes, so the next prompt I input was
Rewrite that in two sentences, for adult readers who are not particularly tech-savvy.
With apologies to my more tech-savvy readers, this time the response was shorter and more intuitive.
Finding a Quote
For my next prompt I wrote,
I’m a public speaking coach and speech writer currently writing a newsletter about the impact of ChatGPT on those professions. My readers are well-educated, but often non-technical adults. I need your best quotes on creating something that devours or destroys its creator.
(The reason I turned to ChatGPT for this info is that all I could think of was Frankenstein, and that was way off point).
It responded,
ChatGPT represents a powerful tool that has the potential to reshape the landscape of public speaking and speech writing. However, like any technology, it’s crucial for us to tread carefully, as we must ensure that we remain the master of this tool, rather than allowing it to devour or overshadow the creative essence and human touch that defines our professions.
Sweet, but not what I was looking for!
So I told it,
Express that idea through a quotation from a known person, with citation.
ChatGPT replied,
Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.” —Christian Lous Lange. Please note that this quote is attributed to Christian Lous Lange, a Norwegian historian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
I thought that quote was perfect, and very much doubt I could have found it on my own. (Here, I benefited from being able to explain what I wanted rather than just searching for key words.)
Suggest an Alternate Phrase
The third way I used it was to find a substitute phrase for “the $64,000 question.”
That phrase came from a 1950s TV show of the same name, and came to mean “a really important question.”
But while my generation, the Baby Boomers, know it well, I asked ChatGPT to find me something more recent. , and it came up with (A) the phrase “million-dollar question” and (B) an explanation of why it is comparable to the first phrase.
What’s Next?
Now I should probably make some grandiose comment about what all of this means for the future of public speaking.
But my mind is completely blown, and instead of pretending to understand the implications here, I’m going to lie down on the couch and do something totally AI-free that only exhausted humans can do:
I’m going to take a nap!!
