ChatGPT - truth is, a brilliant tool can't make us brilliant

ChatGPT is like any other tool—no matter how much potential it has, it is only as advanced as the person using it.?

ChatGPT is one of the hottest things right now.

It is truly a brilliant, brilliant tool that can significantly improve our productivity and the way that we work. However, many people are excited because they’re “finally free” from tasks like writing and research—that “ChatGPT can do it for me, I don’t need to know how to write.”

This is a dangerous and truthfully, very disappointing thought and mindset.?

The relationship and purpose are wrong, to begin with.?

If we can never beat AlphaGo, why do you still play Go? If you have money, why do you still chase your dreams?

You don’t play Go to beat the computer, but enjoy the intellectual challenge and improvement—in fact, AlphaGo should be a source of learning and enlightenment for you to improve.

Similarly, you don’t just chase your dreams for the sake of money, but to make your life worth living—in fact, if you have money, the harder you should chase your dreams, and the higher you should aim! Because your ceiling is now higher.

Tools exist to make you better, to free you from repetitive and standardised tasks so that you can pursue higher-level endeavours. It is to accelerate human potential, not lower human ability! However, this counterproductive result happens when you use ChatGPT as a stand-in for the areas that you lack altogether. You become tied to the software.?

It is to accelerate human potential, not lower human ability!

This is also why currently in school and university, teachers and professors don’t allow us to use ChatGPT. The purpose of writing all these papers and essays is to have you possess a strong academic ability—to be able to communicate your thoughts and ideas in a systematic manner. Eventually, you can let ChatGPT do it for you—but it mustn’t be because you can’t do it yourself. After all, writing is a very foundational communication ability.

Maybe one day we’ll be allowed to use ChatGPT like we use calculators in school—but that must be when we have enough ability to be in full control of that tool, just like with calculators.?

We’re excited by how advanced ChatGPT is—but the thing is, not everyone who sits in a Ferrari wins like Michael Schumacher. Not even everyone who uses Google actually knows how to search to get exactly what they want.

ChatGPT is like any other tool—no matter how much potential it has, it is only as advanced as the person using it.?

If you don’t even know what’s brilliant and what’s good, you wouldn’t be able to recognise it when ChatGPT presents it to you. Vice versa, you wouldn’t be able to weed out what’s bad and even wrong.?

If you don’t even know how to ask the right questions, you wouldn’t be able to get the right answers. This is not just about making your prompts more specific from “write me an essay” to “write me an 800-word essay”. As a matter of fact, we can’t ask for things we don’t know exist—which is why we need to widen our horizons and think more deeply.?

Without your own insights and your own standard of judgement, your opinions are what’s told to you by ChatGPT. You’re not using ChatGPT, ChatGPT is using you. In fact, in a more practical sense—people would want to hire you, work with you or even invest in you because you can do things that ChatGPT can’t, and never because you do the same exact things that ChatGPT does. So, we have to be superior and better than this tool—not settle.?

Lastly, ChatGPT is limited to existing data and materials.

It’s ChatGPT 4.0 now, and it will evolve quickly into 5.0, 6.0, and 7.0—yet, it will still only know as much as what is already existing on the internet.

This is probably enough and will work for pre-university, undergraduate and even masters—but if you’re pursuing a PhD, if you’re trying to push the boundaries of human knowledge, discovery and insight, truly wanting to make progress and breakthroughs, it’s all on you. ChatGPT cannot create for us what doesn’t exist, but we can.?

ChatGPT cannot create for us what doesn’t exist, but we can.?

In fact, with this, rote learning is apparently less and less important—or even completely unimportant.?

Our relationship with knowledge has changed. It's no longer valuable to possess knowledge itself—but the ability to do something with that knowledge.

It's not about what we know, but what we can do with what we know.

Whether we can select correct, appropriate and accurate information based on our own judgment; use information skilfully and effectively; and derive insights beyond the knowledge itself. We use these insights as a basis to judge, organise information, and acquire new insights.

Regarding Insights—actually, all opinions, thoughts, understanding, attitudes, and perspectives can be regarded as insights.

Still, I insist on using “insight” because it emphasises “seeing the deeper level and even the essence of things, through penetrating and summarising various facts, information, phenomena, data and other materials”. It even contains the meaning of “making more predictions and behaviour guidance based on existing materials”—remember, ChatGPT only possesses “existing materials”.

Words like thoughts, understanding, and attitude seem to lack this layer of meaning.?

Having personal insights and the ability to derive insights are core things to possess

Having personal insights and the ability to derive insights are core things to possess—whether in school, work or life. It is what makes us unique, relevant, irreplaceable, sought-after, and better.?

At the end of the day, it’s a personal choice. How far you want to go, and how far you can go, depends on your choices and values.?

Let me know what you think! More than willing to share and discuss :-)