ChatGPT has become a buzzword in Hong Kong in recent months. You might hear someone talking about ChatGPT or AI chatbots everywhere, at restaurants, offices, and shopping malls. From giant tech companies to SMEs, bosses to ordinary staff, many people are exploring opportunities to adopt ChatGPT or other AI tools for productivity.
Recently, POE was released, allowing Hong Kong people to use ChatGPT without VPN access for free. As a person who works in the IT industry, I’m keen on trying this tool.
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, which is trained to follow instructions in a prompt and provide a detailed response. Before that, we might face chatbots in many online services day by day. You might think they were built to make you angry and want to find manual support immediately. In contrast, ChatGPT’s response is detailed, looks knowledgeable and is like a real person. Its usage is so broad that it proofreads your passage, reviews your code, and generates a whole article and program.
Last week I returned from Japan with tons of photos. As I brought 2 lenses to the journey, I wanted to know how many were taken with each lens. Instead of writing a program myself scanning the data inside the photos, I asked ChatGPT to write a script for me. After a few reviews and refinements, the script was ready to use.
Some readers might notice that my last blog post looks different from the posts I usually write. Yes, it was generated by ChatGPT. I told ChatGPT to write an article with about 400 words about how complex the JR Ticketing System and the interior of the train stations are. I also guided ChatGPT to take Shin Osaka Station, Shinjuku Station and HARUKA express railway as examples. After 20 minutes of reviewing and asking ChatGPT to edit the content, I stopped and rewrote the parts by supplementing my experiences and feelings.
ChatGPT keeps evolving – it integrates with Microsoft Office and can now generate PowerPoint slides. It seems like ChatGPT is so powerful that it may replace every one. Not really. It is not perfect. Don’t over-rely on it. ChatGPT works best when writing business writing, summarising readings and generating codes and scripts. It requires more input to understand the emotion and tone users need. New users often don’t realise the techniques and thus generate dull articles.
Another problem is ChatGPT strives its best to answer you even if it doesn’t know it. One day I tested ChatGPT on the Scrum framework. It answered with incorrect information. My girlfriend asked ChatGPT for some referencing thesis. It responded to her with nonexistent writing.
As a lazy person, I often find ways to eliminate the repetitive, meaningless and heavy-workload work. I treat ChatGPT as my personal assistant. It trains me to think of commanding effectively. If your commands are effective and without redundant or nonsense things, you will get the best thing ChatGPT can provide. Moreover, ChatGPT sometimes outputs false information. This trains me to review and verify the output and provide valuable feedback and follow-up actions. ChatGPT is a kata for people who want to pursue a career in management or leadership.
How about blogging? My last blog post is only an experiment on writing using ChatGPT. Blogging is my learning tool. Using ChatGPT would ruin the purpose. The free version of Grammarly is already good enough for me to improve my writing.