ChatGPT is dumber than it looks

The idea is: learn to prompt chatbots very well = get way better outputs.

Right now, intricate prompting is helpful for some tasks. But over time, we think it’s an overrated skill. Here’s why:

1. As AI models improve, they require less “engineered” prompts. DALL-E 3 is a great example of this (you get top-tier images with < 10-word prompts).

In this c... See more

ChatGPT didn’t say much that was useful at all. But—as the students reflected in their conversation after reading ChatGPT’s analysis—neither did they. One student noted that they were just saying “formulaic, buzzwordy stuff” rather than tackling the issue with fresh thinking. They were unnerved by how closely the empty shine of ChatGPT’s answer mir... See more

The right way to use ChatGPT going forward might be to follow the programmer’s maxim that if you do it three times, you should automate it, except now the threshold might be two and if something is nontrivial it also might be one. You can use others’ versions, but there is a lot to be said for rolling one’s own if the process is easy. If it works w... See more