When I chatted with Chat GPT…

The buzz of Chat GPT in the world of content is creating waves and if you are in the field, you would not have missed its news. So, I thought of trying it…

First, I asked it - How can learning be improved for adult learners?

Formation of goals, the inclusion of experiences, consideration of learning styles, the pacing of delivery, and provision of additional support and resources were the first tips to emerge.

I liked the idea of connecting learning material with our experiences so I replied…

Connecting learning material with experience

Next, I picked ideas like reflecting upon learning material, asking questions, identifying connections with existing knowledge, and discussing topics with others.

Once again, I picked the best bit and replied…

Connecting new lessons with prior knowledge

This time, I got a list of questions that asked a reader to think about things already known, find connections with experiences, discover connections with other areas, and create a concept or mind map.

Brilliant idea! Concept mapping for learning and I typed again

It explained how to create a concept map and that it is useful for organizing information. So far, the information shared is already known to me but can I go deeper here and find something that I do not know? Some discovery I needed so I typed…

Example of concept mapping for learning

Here emerged an unexpected word – Photosynthesis

The AI drilled down into sub-topics like light energy, carbon dioxide, water, glucose, and chlorophyll to create nodes of the map and suggested the use of phrases like ‘converted to’ or ‘required for’ to describe relationships between these nodes.

Impressive so far but when the next paragraph ended with the idea that a concept map is a visual representation of key concepts, it kind of circled back to what was already covered in an article presented earlier.

I wondered if I could give it a new direction so I typed again...

Concept map for learning transfer

Again a similar structure emerged – sub-topics were identified – with new keywords. Transfer task, transfer knowledge, relevant knowledge, depth of understanding but post this, there were no phrases were introduced.

At this point, I wondered from where did AI pick this information so I searched on Google…

learning transfer, prior knowledge, transfer task, transfer context

I did not find one article but a set of articles that contained great information on learning transfer. I could not figure out from which portals AI brought the information together but I found a wonderful article – An introduction to Transfer Learning on Medium.

This was my true discovery. If I had gone through Google directly and had used my initial search, ‘How can learning be improved for adult learners?’, I would not have found this article for long but with the help of Chat GPT, I was able to crack a few keywords niche to the topic and then the search delivered me the most accurate results that I loved to read.

If Google simplifies the search, Chat GPI helps direct our search through active conversations. It might not be a replacement for a search engine but definitely a tool to complement it and ease the journey of its users. This tool is a smart search engine that will not give you concrete content like Google but it does provide you with basics and gives you direction so that you can reach your destined content page fast. It took me only a few minutes. A normal search would have required me to read a couple of articles before getting here but with Chat GPT, I could do it quickly.

But a caveat for writers who think that this tool is a shortcut to generating new content – this tool doesn’t give you new ideas but only organizes the basic concepts into a structure that makes it easier for you to make sense of. Use it wisely to explore, research, and find ideas, not to find content that can be rehashed to produce an article.

This is a powerful tool, just like Copy AI that I tried earlier. It does something similar and searches content using the keywords you provide. It goes a step further to also add tone to your article and provides you with a full-length outline for an article. So, I tried again…

Concept map for learning transfer

The result was not impressive, the keywords I used were just organized in a list. And then I generated talking points and it simply added a few more pointers under each keyword.

To Learning Transfer, it added the ability to apply, difficulty in transfer, career success, and life success.

I generated more and it gave me more keywords like education, learning transfer, and problem-solving.

My next job should be to expand on these points to write an article so I generated content…

A pop-up then asked me to upgrade. I cannot say anything about the quality of content that would be generated if I subscribed but since I had used it earlier when it was newly launched and was completely free, I can say that it delivered articles similar to what Chat GPT is doing today.

This also means that in near future, just as Copy AI became a paid platform for generating the content, Chat GPT might also do the same to you, or not!

After my chat with Chat GPT and conversations with Copy AI, I can conclude that these platforms can be used to get good talking points but they would not replace the unique thought process of a good writer. For writers, who look for shortcuts, and think less but write more, these tools can be real threats. Who would hire a writer to provide basic content when a tool can do the same for free? For writers who carry creativity and work with original thoughts to produce content, these tools are a piece of good news for they can simplify search and ideation, and also give a structure to thoughts to ease a writer’s journey.