ChatGPT and The Professional's Guide to Using AI
Allie K. Miller
#1 Most Followed Voice in AI Business (1.5M) | Former Amazon, IBM | Fortune 500 AI and Startup Advisor, Public Speaker | @alliekmiller on Instagram, X, TikTok | AI-First Course with 30K+ students - Link in Bio
ChatGPT: the latest artificial intelligence release from OpenAI.
If you're anything like me, this new technology has taken over your entire social media feed and social life. Every text conversation I have inevitably falls to the question: "So have you tested ChatGPT? What do you think?" My inbox is filled with countless folks asking me how they can use it to improve their lives, wondering if it deserves the hype and attention, or anxiously questioning if it will completely take over their job. All of these reactions are normal, and you are not alone.
I wanted to write this article to help as many people as possible understand what this technology is, what it can do, why it's important, why it's different, and how professionals across a variety of industries can leverage ChatGPT to find more job success, get more career satisfaction, improve their workplace impact, and potentially even increase their likelihood of promotion.
If you'd like to follow along with this article and try out your own ChatGPT prompts, you can register for an OpenAI account with your email address, Google account, or Microsoft account and use it for yourself at chat.openai.com. The website and app are currently free, though there is speculation it might be monetized in the future.
Machine Learning in Your Life
You might already be familiar with machine learning (ML) models in your everyday life. Here are some traditional examples:
All of these are fantastic use cases for machine learning and have saved me hours in manual typing, days in media organization, and endless agony in watching terrible TV shows.
Why ChatGPT is Different
But unlike these "invisible" models (like Netflix, ones that just run in the backend without you specifically asking) or "cache it and query later" models (like Google Photos, that store the ML data and outputs as you upload the photos for quick searches months later) or "single query" models (like Siri, where you can ask a question or two, but it doesn't really carry on a conversation), ChatGPT is a machine learning model with a full conversational interface.
And in my opinion, it's the chat interface, early guardrails, and context length that set ChatGPT's model and application apart.
I've been building, pushing for, and investing in ML applications for years, and ChatGPT is one of the few large language models to hit this at scale, and at lightspeed. In fact, ChatGPT hit 1 million users in just 5 days (which is mindboggling compared to GPT-3, which took 24 months to hit the same milestone). ChatGPT's no-code interface allows for anyone to use it. Unlike other sophisticated and complex ML models making their way through scientific research and engineering communities, you don't have to be a coder to use ChatGPT. If you know how to text a friend, you know how to use ChatGPT. It's as easy as typing a sentence and getting a response.
If you know how to text a friend, you know how to use ChatGPT.
The team behind ChatGPT also heavily invested in safety mitigations and continue to gather feedback from users via the "upvote" and "downvote" on the site, as well as likely other methods (social media, customer feedback, researcher programs, iterative development, constant benchmarking, collaborations, internal teams, etc.). OpenAI demonstrates its ability to combat hallucination prompts (basically, asking a question that never happened like "When did the Eiffel Tower fall down?") with ChatGPT here—just search for the "Columbus" example.
But when it comes to the topic of context length, I'm going to need a whole section. Feel free to skip it if you're less interested in the nuts and bolts, but I promise I made it beginner-friendly.
ChatGPT and The Power of Increased Context Length
Let's say we're having a conversation, but every 100 words shared between us, my memory completely resets (or a bit more accurately, I can only remember our previously spoken 100 words).
Imagine how difficult that might make our conversations. You might tell me all about your recent vacation to Montana, the cool motorcycle you rented, and the moose you almost ran into on the trail, but if we talk about elevators for a few minutes, I will have zero recollection about the motorcycle and moose. That's basically what language models have been dealing with.
An ML model's context length is an indicator of an AI system's long-term memory and knowledge retention capabilities. For the advanced ML folks, here is a 2022 paper from Arxiv sharing how "models with increased context length are better able to solve the [long document] tasks presented." While increased context length is not critical for all machine learning use cases, it is imperative for some.
So context length matters. But how big of a leap is ChatGPT?
GPT-2 (released in February 2019 by OpenAI) had a context length of 1,024 tokens. GPT-3 (released in June 2020 by OpenAI) had a context length of 2,048 tokens. ChatGPT (released November 2022) has a likely context length of 4,096, or as one Twitter user ( Riley Goodside ) tested, maybe 8,192 tokens.
It's the chat interface, early guardrails, and context length that set ChatGPT's model and application apart.
There are other methods to extend context length (and many theorize ChatGPT uses chained prompts), but its longer context length is already a big deal in my book.
So let's turn this nerdy token talk into real examples. 100 tokens is equivalent to about 75 words. So to put this in perspective with a basic conversion, GPT-2 could handle about 768 words in its context length, GPT-3 could handle 1,536 words, and ChatGPT is theorized to be able to handle either 3,072 or 6,144 words.
Here is a quick visual demonstration showing you what a token is, using OpenAI's Tokenizer tool. Each new highlighted bit is a token, and you can read the example for details. Feel free to find a document and paste it in to see how many tokens it is.
Tying that into real examples, a full length tweet is about 55 words. The length of an average New York Times article is 622 words. A random instruction manual I found online for a Honeywell programmable thermostat was 1,300 words. The U.S. Constitution is 4,543 words (7,591 including the 27 amendments). For all your internet meme fans, the script for the Bee Movie is 9,155 words. A standard novel is about 90,000 words. The book War and Peace is 587,287 words. And the King James Authorized Bible is 783,137 words.
Right now, we're somewhere between an instruction manual and the script for Bee Movie. And while this may sound quite limited, ChatGPT's context length is a big leap from its predecessors and it's enough to grab my attention, especially when it comes to conversational AI or chat interfaces.
This Moment is Like the Launch of Google Search
I have written, delivered, and filmed thousands of posts, videos, tweets, articles, and keynotes about the future of artificial intelligence and machine learning. For several years, it was my literal job at Amazon to predict and invest our resources into the future of machine learning. Despite that, without fail, there is always a small but persistent cohort in my comments section saying, "Eh, I'm not impressed." or "This is nothing special." or "I can already do that."
Ignore them.
Being ahead of the curve means adopting technology while others say it's dumb. That's how this works. People may mock you, question you, disagree with you, or laugh at you, and it might go on for years or even decades, but that's what it feels like to tap into an insight that not everyone else can see. It will look stupid to some. But to the visionaries, the dreamers, the fortunetellers, it's obvious.
That's what this feels like.
Now, I don't want to diminish the AI advancements of the last 66 years. We wouldn't be here today if not for those brilliant teams and thinkers and their research and innovation. My jaw has dropped to the floor multiple times in my career as I witnessed new breakthroughs across human versus AI videogame battles, weather predictions, drug discovery, and more. But this whole article is about step function growth, and the next few years (including GPT-4) are only going to be bigger.
Being ahead of the curve means adopting technology while others say it's dumb.
I'm going to sound like an MLM for a moment, but with nothing to sell you: this is the time to act. This is the time to be ahead of the curve, to be the person at your work who brings new ideas to the table, who creates new processes or programs that positively impact the lives of you, your team, and your customers.
Because in the same way that Google or the internet lets you access knowledge in real-time, AI will let you access intelligence in real-time.
I'll share two quotes from leaders that I look up to. Reid Hoffman , the co-founder of LinkedIn, said in a statement to CNBC, "AI is one of the most transformative technologies of our time." And Mark Cuban said on The Colin Cowherd Podcast, "There’s two types of companies: those who are great at AI and everybody else." And went on to say that in order to be successful, "at some point, you’re going to have to understand it."
In the same way that Google lets you access knowledge in real-time, AI will let you access intelligence in real-time.
If you're curious about this technology, I encourage you to lean in and dig in to more companies, models, and applications. Despite being the focus of this article, OpenAI is not the only player in the "mega model" space. In addition to the big cloud service providers (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud), there are a number of research labs and startups breaking onto the scene across language and vision and general intelligence—from Anthropic and Cohere AI, to AI21 and Aleph Alpha, to Stability AI and Wombo AI. I've been fortunate enough to work with the majority of these companies; the next two years of artificial intelligence development are going to be huge.
So how can professionals use ChatGPT?
Professionals from all industries can leverage artificial intelligence and ChatGPT to improve their worklife, but it can't do everything. AI is not a replacement for every single task you do right now. It's a tool, and it matters how you use it.
ChatGPT can get you a rough draft of a meeting agenda, but it can't hold the team meeting for you. It can help you brainstorm great birthday gift ideas for your mom based on her interests, but it can't call her and hear about her day. ChatGPT can give you the list of questions to ask your doctor so you have a better appointment experience, but it can't diagnose you like a medical professional can.
It's a rough draft, a first try, a brainstorm tool, a foundation, an augmentation.
But you need to bring the industry expertise, the execution, the critical thinking, the teamwork and collaboration, and the emotional intelligence.
So what is the first step to using ChatGPT in a meaningul way in your work? Think about your repetitive tasks at work. Open up a Google Doc right now or grab a sheet of paper and write down the repetitive, manual things you do on a daily or weekly basis: write emails, create to-do lists, generate meeting agendas, recap workshops, commute to work, pick a podcast to listen to, edit weekly budgets, write status reports, whatever. Circle two that you believe ChatGPT can help with, and start to form example prompts to submit.
Grab a sheet of paper and write down the repetitive, manual things you do on a daily or weekly basis.
My other advice before continuing on is to read the Terms of Service on OpenAI's website. Section 3A includes content rights and currently states: "As between the parties and to the extent permitted by applicable law, you own all Input, and subject to your compliance with these Terms, OpenAI hereby assigns to you all its right, title and interest in and to Output. OpenAI may use Content as necessary to provide and maintain the Services, comply with applicable law, and enforce our policies. You are responsible for Content, including for ensuring that it does not violate any applicable law or?these?Terms."
This goes without saying, and this is not legal advice, but ChatGPT is a research tool, and you should never submit confidential information to the system. Additionally, be sure to understand your specific company and team policies—there are many schools that have blocked the use of ChatGPT on campus while they adjust their homework and testing protocols.
Now that you've brainstormed some repetitive tasks and read the fine print, let's get into it.
Real Ways Professionals Can Use ChatGPT to Improve Job Performance
Let's dive into some real examples of how professionals across sales, marketing, product management, project management, recruiting, and teaching can take advantage of this new tool and leverage it for even more impact in their careers.
Teachers and ChatGPT
Sales and ChatGPT
Marketing and ChatGPT
Recruiting and ChatGPT?
Product Management and ChatGPT
Here are even more Product Management examples from Cookup AI.
Project Management and ChatGPT
And that's just scratching the surface. More than anything, I hope that gives you some examples to start from and a sense of how powerful this tool can be in your life.
What role are you most curious about? What is your role today? I can imagine hundreds of use cases for content creators, startup founders, chefs, electricians, nurses, executive assistants, software engineers, lawyers, mechanics, designers, scientists, landscapers, and more. Take a few minutes to brainstorm what some use cases in your industry might be, try them out with ChatGPT, and share it on social media so others can learn from you.
I can imagine hundreds of use cases for chefs, electricians, nurses, engineers, lawyers, mechanics, designers, scientists, landscapers, and more.
Beyond the job roles shared above, Cookup AI also has a list of use cases by category that can be found here. Read on to learn about 6 use cases anyone can use and 11 tips on how to use ChatGPT to its fullest from AI experts.
6 More ChatGPT Use Cases for Every Type of Professional
I wrote a LinkedIn post that went viral (or on Twitter, if that's your preference) on how professionals in any industry can use ChatGPT for gains in productivity, creativity, and learning. Below are those use cases as well as example prompts that anyone, regardless of domain, can use.
Summary. Copy and paste an article, and ask, “Can you summarize this article in one paragraph in a way that a 5th grader could understand it?”
Coding. Ask it to write basic scripts or even more qualitative questions like “what is the most efficient way to loop through a list in Python?”
Professionals in any industry can use ChatGPT for gains in productivity, creativity, and learning.
Planning. Think of an overwhelming task you have on your plate and a reasonable timeline, and ask, “Create a schedule for me to launch my new machine learning startup by May 1, 2023. Please include deliverables, timelines, contingency planning, team bonding, breaks, brainstorming, and user testing.”
Creativity. Think of something you want to shake up in your life and ask, “I’m going to turn 40-years-old soon and I want to celebrate my birthday in a new and different way that incorporates my passions. I love archery, Korean BBQ, musicals, and axe throwing. What are three ideas for a birthday that costs under $2000 and can accommodate 10 people?”
Writer's Block. Do you have an email or blog post you’ve been meaning to write but need a little push? Just ask, “Write a nice email to Tom that asks him if he enjoyed the offsite, and then to update his monthly report and send me his promotion document.” Use that as a foundation, then edit or tweak as needed.
Motivation. AI is not a replacement for trained medical professionals, but if you’re feeling a little low you can ask, “Can you give me three motivational phrases to help me get through a hard day when I’m low on sleep?”
Feel free to try the Summary idea above on this very article. Copy the URL from this article, navigate to ChatGPT, and type in the following prompt: "Please summarize this article: <paste the link>". ChatGPT will scrape the site to read the text and then do its best to sum up everything the system reads in this article. You can also copy and paste the text of the article or even a single section if you prefer.
11 Expert ChatGPT Tips Any Professional Can Leverage
Two humans asking ChatGPT similar questions can get vastly different results. I've been testing the tool daily, watching every ChatGPT video I can find, and speaking with other AI leaders to compile a list of 11 top tips that anyone reading this can use right away.
Part of preparing for the future means understanding it. And understanding it often means trying it, testing it, breaking it.
Future Predictions and Your Next Steps with ChatGPT
ChatGPT is not the first "send text to an AI system and make it do something" tool, and it won't be the last. There are already startups like Adept building AI RPA (robotic process automation) systems that will help you navigate a website's data through text prompts. For example, you can visit a furniture website and type in to a little textbox pop-up "show me dark gray couches that cost less than $2,000 and can be delivered in the next two weeks" and the six couches that match that query will pop-up, and you can skip over all of those pre-configured filters on the side. Search, navigation, data processing, and more will all be handled through natural language.
It will also be more intelligent. In the future, instead of typing into YouTube a literal video you want (like "how to apply fake eyelashes") and clicking one on or some of the top ranked videos, you'll instead type "I want to get better at eye makeup" and it will auto-create a course for you. AI will move us from content-based queries to higher order goal-based queries, and everything will be customized to you. The TED Conferences (TED Talks) app is surprisingly one of the first brands to jump on this—I remember in 2009 navigating the app and filtering by video length and emotions like "funny" and "insightful", and 13 years later, the recommendation system categorizes its videos based on the viewers' goals (like "ideas for self-improvement", "a glimpse into the future", or "a sense of hope").
AI will move us from content-based queries to higher order goal-based queries, and everything will be customized to you.
A good framework for the future of technology is what I call the "Three Ps". Artificial intelligence in its most effective form will be Personalized (everything will become a market of one), Predictive (we can forecast actions and answers before they happen), and Proactive (we will take action on those predictions). So a subsequent version of ChatGPT or similar technology will be customized entirely to you, your life, and your goals, and it will share intelligence or take action with your approval but without your explicit query.
Looking ahead, one of the best things you can do for yourself when it comes to augmenting your worklife is to stay curious. Try new ways of using this technology, and see how it reacts. Have it design a workout plan for you and actually follow it and blog your experience. Throw an AI party and pull ChatGPT up on your TV to write a get-to-know-you game on the fly. Try new AI tools that your friends recommend and that you feel comfortable with. Ask your kids to show you the latest mobile app they're using and loving. The sky's the limit, but you need to keep poking at it.
Another tip is to keep asking critical questions about what this AI can do (and what it can't do). Dig into and test its limitations. Pay close attention to bias, data privacy, and the intentions of the builders. Ask the big questions and leverage your resources to find the answer, even if that means doing it yourself. Your voice matters, and I'm right there with you—I still send customer feedback or post concerns like this when I test new AI products. AI is a massive paradigm shift for our world, and everyone deserves a voice in our future. That includes you.
AI is a massive paradigm shift for our world, and everyone deserves a voice in our future.
Lastly, do what you can to stay relatively up to date. You don't have to be logged on every minute of the day or read every article that comes out (that would be an insurmountable task anyways), but I would make it a priority to check in on these advancements once every few weeks to start with. The tool and its use cases are constantly evolving and improving, so consider the following:
ChatGPT and other AI technologies have the potential to significantly improve your job satisfaction, job success, likelihood of promotion, and impact on the world no matter your job or industry. If used appropriately and effectively, AI systems can be used to free up time spent on repetitive tasks (like email or meeting agendas) so that you can do what you do best and focus on more impactful and meaningful work. If you have other ideas for these roles or other roles and how they may use ChatGPT or AI to maximize job success or job satisfaction, please be sure to drop a comment below.
And before any of you ask, no, I did not use ChatGPT to write this article.
Just a case of Diet Coke.
About ChatGPT, GPT-3, GPT-3.5, and OpenAI: OpenAI was founded in December 2015 by Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Wojciech Zaremba, Elon Musk, and John Schulman. "GPT" stands for "Generative Pre-Trained", meaning (a) the model can create brand-new outputs that are not copied-and-pasted from its original dataset and (b) that it has already been fed the data and comes to you trained so you can use it out-of-the-box. GPT-3.5 (or InstructGPT) is a sister model to ChatGPT. InstructGPT uses GPT-3 as its base model and is finetuned using RLHF ("reinforcement learning with human feedback") to add additional guardrails. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT is fine-tuned from a model in the GPT-3.5 series, which you can read about here. In 2019, OpenAI received $1B in funding from Microsoft.
Contributors to ChatGPT, according to the ChatGPT page: John Schulman, Barret Zoph, Christina Kim, Jacob Hilton, Jacob Menick, Jiayi Weng, Juan Felipe Ceron Uribe, Liam Fedus, Luke Metz, Michael Pokorny, Rapha Gontijo Lopes, Shengjia Zhao, Arun Vijayvergiya, Eric Sigler, Adam Perelman, Chelsea Voss, Mike Heaton, Joel Parish, Dave Cummings, Rajeev Nayak, Valerie Balcom, David Schnurr, Tomer Kaftan, Chris Hallacy, Nicholas Turley, Noah Deutsch, Vik Goel, Jonathan Ward, Aris Konstantinidis, Wojciech Zaremba, Long Ouyang, Leonard Bogdonoff, Joshua Gross, David Medina, Sarah Yoo, Teddy Lee, Ryan Lowe, Dan Mossing, Joost Huizinga, Roger Jiang, Carroll Wainwright, Diogo Almeida, Steph Lin, Marvin Zhang, Kai Xiao, Katarina Slama, Steven Bills, Alex Gray, Jan Leike, Jakub Pachocki, Phil Tillet, Shantanu Jain, Greg Brockman, Nick?Ryder.
About the Author: Allie K. Miller is a top artificial intelligence leader, advisor, and investor who has led scaled AI initiatives at two of the five largest cloud providers in the world. Allie was most recently the Global Head of Machine Learning for Startups & Venture Capital at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Prior to that, Allie worked at IBM, spearheading development across computer vision, conversation, data, and regulation. Outside of work, Allie is a National Ambassador for AAAS, and has spoken about AI around the world, drafted national AI strategies, and created over 10 guidebooks on how to build successful AI and Web3 projects. Allie shares the latest in AI to her more than 1 million social media followers on LinkedIn and was named LinkedIn Top Voice 2019 & 2020 & 2021, Chief in Tech’s Top 100 Women in Tech to Watch, Award Magazine’s Top 50 Women in Tech, and ReadWrite’s Top 20 AI Speakers in the World.
Strategic Director & VC Investor
7 个月I enjoyed reading this article. It was informative and engaging
???? Data Scientist | ?? AI & GPT | @Godi.AI -> Founder
8 个月Great article! It's fascinating to see the integration with ChatGPT. I'd be interested in creating an automated formatting tool with Python.
CEO and Education Specialist at Stones Disability Services | Empowering Support Workers and Participants with knowledge and skills while using AI.
8 个月“AI will move us from content-based queries to higher order goal-based queries, and everything will be customized to you.” The world seems to think we are going to become dumber using AI. I see it the other way. We will be learning critical and higher order thinking along with AI, which will make us smarter.
Data Analyst | Virtual Assistant | Excel & Google Workspace | Email & Calendar Management | Data Entry | Driving Business Growth with Analytical Insights & Productivity Tools
9 个月Thank you for sharing.
Global Desk Manager at ISCEA
9 个月https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmSm_kSyHJ4