ChatGPT Must Die
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ChatGPT is too good to live.
ChatGPT is a chat bot invented by a company called OpenAI. It talks with you and, more importantly, answers questions.
I love ChatGPT.
To put ChatGPT in context, allow me to review my current system of finding answers to questions on the internet.
- A question comes to mind. Something simple, on a subject I’m curious about.
- I devise some keywords for a Boolean search of the internet intended to lead me to the answer I am looking for.
- I type the keywords into Google and get a list of links to websites that might have information related to my search words
- I ignore the top five links because they are “promoted,” which is code for they will give me as little information as possible while trying to sell me stuff.
- I click on the first non-promoted site and get told that it won’t give me anything unless I turn off the ad blocker that is built into my browser, Opera.
- I find a site that doesn’t kick me off for having an ad blocker and begin scrolling for the promised useful information. I scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll, passing hundreds of broken links to ads, until such time as analytics has determined that I am just about to give up.
- And finally, there is a nugget of information related to my keywords.
- I repeat the process at least nine times, and then assemble the various nuggets of information into an answer to my question.
Now don’t get me wrong. There are ways around all this. I can skip the Google search by going directly to Wikipedia for the kind of stuff Wikipedia covers. Appending the word “Reddit” to my search can lead to real people — as opposed to “content producers” — talking about the subject I’m interested in. In certain fields, Google Scholar does a good job.
But for the simple questions of everyday life, ChatGPT is my new best friend. I pose a question in the language of my choice — I only tried English and Spanish — and I get a short essay response. If I want to do follow-up questions, I can.
Eureka!
The answers I get from ChatGPT are not top-notch. They are like the free-breakfasts at hotels…