How to Use ChatGPT, the AI Tool Everyone is Talking About

You’ve probably heard of ChatGPT by now, but have you used the AI tool or played around with it? If not, you may be intrigued to discover and toy around with ChatGPT, as it’s really quite impressive and powerful, whether you want it to write you formal emails, come up with AppleScript for a specific task, write an essay for you on a given topic, explain how something works in simple terms, or whatever else your imagination comes up with.

For the unfamiliar, ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence language model that understands and generates human language. Developed by OpenAI (with a large recent investment from Microsoft), it works by processing large amounts of data inputs from the web, articles, and books, to then perform various tasks, whether that’s answering questions, generating code, writing text in various styles, and much more.

It’s a very powerful tool that we will all undoubtedly be hearing a lot from over the coming years, so why not try out ChatGPT yourself, explore how it works, and see what you think.

How to Use ChatGPT

To use ChatGPT all you need is any modern device with a web browser, so launch Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, or your browser of choice, and get started.

1. Go to https://chat.openai.com/ in a web browser and signup (or login with Google or a Microsoft account)



2. At the prompt, ask a question on virtually any subject (as long as it was pre-2021, since that was the data it was given to work with for now), for example:



• “Explain string theory in simple terms”
• “Why is AI dangerous?”
• “Write me an AppleScript that turns off my Mac at 6pm on Thursdays”
• “Write me a python script that finds the 10 most commonly used words on a webpage”
• “Write me a formal letter using complex legalese that tells my neighbor to stop eating my flowers”
• “Write a letter to my boss to quit my job, but make it sound like a 2nd grader wrote it”
• “Tell me about your ethics”
• “Give me a fictional conversation between Einstein and Oppenheimer where they discuss nuclear fusion”
• “Give me a recipe that uses spaghetti, sausage, broccoli, and tomato sauce”
• “Plan me a 10 day vacation somewhere safe and tropical, but exotic and unique”
• “Write me a song about loving cookies written in iambic pentameter”



3. You can then explore and refine answers by saying things like “explain that further” or “rewrite, but make it sound like a third grader wrote it”
4. Have fun and be impressed (and/or creeped out)

ChatGPT is genuinely impressive as you will quickly find out, and it’s astonishing how many careers, jobs, positions, and duties will be enhanced, impacted, or obsoleted in one way or another by these type of AI tools.

Here, ChatGPT writes a bash script to find large files, then explains how the bash script works:

Here, ChatGPT offers a recipe given a set of ingredients

ChatGPT explains it’s own ethics:

With how impressive and elaborate ChatGPT is, you really wonder why Siri just wants to search the web for basically every request or question, but maybe that’s a good thing since Siri is obviously not becoming sentient anytime soon even if it starts talking out of the blue often when it misidentifies a verbal cue for ‘Hey Siri’. Do you think Siri should be as smart and as capable as ChatGPT? Should Apple tie ChatGPT in to Siri? Microsoft put a heavy investment into ChatGPT, so that would be an interesting alliance, given the history of rivalry between Apple and Microsoft.

What do you think of ChatGPT? Do you find it useful, intriguing, pointless, terrifying, or something else? Do you think ChatGPT and AI tools like it will obsolete and replace jobs in the near future, or are humans necessary?

(* Artwork at the very top of this page was generated using an AI drawing tool called NightCafe, which is a completely different AI journey to explore but also fun)