Business 150

What is ChatGPT good for and not good for?

Remember, you'll always need to verify the information, because ChatGPT will sometimes make things up (known as "hallucination.")

What is it good for?

• Brainstorming ideas

• Narrowing your topic ideas for a research paper, and keywords for searching in library databases.

• Explaining information in ways that are easy to understand

• Summarizing and outlining

• Asking questions (be sure to fact check the results) You can ask a million questions without fear of being judged.

• Translating text to different languages (not completely fluent in every language)

• Helping write or debug computing code

What is it not so good for?

• Library research (not yet). For now, it's best to use the catalog, databases, or even Google scholar to find scholarly articles. This may change in the future with more specialized search tools based on LLMs. 

• Asking for any information that would have dire consequences if it was incorrect (such as health, financial, legal advice, and so on). This is because of its tendency to sometimes make up answers, but still sound very confident.

What is prompting?
Simply, it's what you type into the chat box.

The way you prompt makes a huge difference in the output that ChatGPT gives you. So it's worth learning some tips.

Always verify the information it gives you.
Think of ChatGPT as your personal intern. They need very specific instructions, and they need you to verify the information.

ChatGPT sometimes makes things up. That's because it's designed to write in a way that sounds like human writing. It's not designed to know facts.

Tips for writing effective prompts

1. Give it some context or a role to play.
2. Give it very detailed instructions, including how you would like the results formatted.
3. Keep conversing and asking for changes. Ask it to revise the answer in various ways.

Examples

1. A role could be, "Act as an expert in [fill in the blank]." 
   Act as an expert community organizer.
   Act as a high school biology teacher.
   Act as a comedian.
    
2. Example prompt:
   Act as an expert academic librarian. I’m writing a research paper for Sociology and I need help coming up with a topic. I’m interested in topics related to climate change. Please give me a list of 10 topic ideas related to climate change.
    
3. Example of changes: (keep conversing until you get something useful)
   Now give me some sub-topics or research questions for [one of those topics]. And give me a list of keywords and phrases I can use to search for that topic in library databases and Google Scholar.
    

   Or...

   I didn't like any of those topics. Please give me 10 more.

	ChatGPT	Open AI Free, built on GPT-3.5 No web search results. Trained on data only through January 2022.
	ChatGPT Plus	Open AI $20/mo, built on GPT-4 Includes: a "browse with Bing" feature that allows it to search for information on websites Advanced Data Analysis" (formerly Code Interpreter) GPT4-Vision (for uploading images and discussing them) Image generation with DALL-E 3. (as of Nov. 6, 2023: all these features combined into "all tools.") A new feature for building chatbots without using code. These are called "GPTs." (available to Plus users only) Enterprise edition for large businesses. Teams account for small business.
	Microsoft Copilot	Microsoft Free, built on GPT-4 (If you use Creative mode, Balanced mode = CPT3.5) Generate images with DALL-E 3 using Bing Image Creator Includes web search results from Bing Search. Copilot Pro Plan with more features for individuals. Copilot for Microsoft 365 with more features for institutions and businesses.
	Bard	Google Free, built on Gemini Pro (as of Dec. 6, 2023) Includes web search results from Google.
	Claude 2	Anthropic Free. Also available in Slack. Built on their own model. Focused on reliability and safety. No web search results. Trained on data only through December 2022.
	Perplexity AI	Perplexity Free, built on GPT-3.5.  Includes web search results. Offers "Focus" choices such as YouTube, Reddit, Semantic Scholar ,and Wolfram|Alpha. You can use it without creating an account. Pro account also available that uses GPT4 or Claude2.

Which models are the most capable?

• ChatGPT Plus (with a monthly fee) is also based on GPT-4.
   
• Microsoft Copilot in creative mode) is based on GPT-4. And it's free to use.
   
• Perplexity AI with their pro account -- you can get access to the more capable model (GPT-4).
   
• Claude is also quite good, but not connected to the Internet. Trained on data up to December 2022.

Which models are less capable?

• Google's Bard is now about as capable as the free ChatGPT (3.5), since it uses Gemini Pro as the underlying model. This could change sometime in 2024 when they make Gemini Ultra available.
   
• ChatGPT free version (GPT 3.5)

For a list of more AI tools, see AI Tools Landscape by Carlos Lizarraga-Celaya.