What is ChatGPT?

What is ChatGPT and How Does It Work?

Getting Started with ChatGPT

How to Use ChatGPT

Sample Uses of ChatGPT

Flow Chart: Is it Safe to Use ChatGPT?

Considerations when using ChatGPT

What is ChatGPT and How Does It Work?

ChatGPT is a language model that allows people to interact with a computer in a more natural and conversational way. GPT stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer” and is the name given to a family of natural language models developed by open Artificial Intelligence (AI). This is also known as a form of generative AI because of its ability to produce original results. ChatGPT uses natural language processing to learn from Internet data, providing users with artificial intelligence-based written answers to questions or prompts. These models are trained on large text datasets to learn to predict the next word in a sentence and, from that, generate coherent and compelling human-like output in response to a question or statement. In the case of ChatGPT, 570gb of data representing 300 billion words have been supplied to the system and it has around 175 billion parameters. We can think about ChatGPT as a “computer robot” with whom you can talk about anything. This is helped by its user-friendly interface. ChatGPT can be asked for data, analysis, and even an opinion. However, the algorithm by which it works does not take a definite position, as its interpretation is based on the statistical analysis of billions of texts on the Internet.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is not new, but the widespread adoption of ChatGPT in late 2022 brought unprecedented attention to the capabilities of AI. Although ChatGPT has become synonymous with generative AI, it is just one of many other AI tools (i.e, Google’s Bard, Bing , Claude , You.ai, and more).

Image generator tools include DALL-E 2, Bing's Image Creator, and Midjourney.

Getting Started with ChatGPT

Be sure to review ChatGPT's (or any other AI tool’s) privacy policy and Terms of Service (TOS) prior to creating an account. (Tip: how to quickly read a Terms of Service).

In any internet browser, go to: https://chat.openai.com/
Create an account:
1. Enter your email address or connect a Google or Microsoft account.
2. Create a password (at least 8 characters).
3. Check the email address for an email from OpenAI and click to verify your email address.
4. Enter your first and last name and date of birth
5. Enter your phone number.
6. Enter the verification code that you receive by text message.

Note that ChatGPT is not currently available in all countries.

Popov, C. (2023, July 3). What data Chat GPT collects about you, and why is this important for your digital privacy. Bitdefender. https://www.bitdefender.com/blog/hotforsecurity/what-data-chat-gpt-collects-about-you-and-why-is-this-important-for-your-digital-privacy/

How to Use ChatGPT

Once you have created an account or logged in, enter your question or prompt into the field ‘Send a message’.
The response will be generated immediately, with the words appearing quickly across your screen.
1. a. Consider marking whether the response is acceptable or not by selecting the thumb up or thumb down icon. If you select an icon, a pop-up box will ask you to provide additional comments (not required) before you submit your feedback.
Click ‘Regenerate response’ to have ChatGPT answer the same prompt again.
1. Consider marking whether you found the revised response better, the same or worse
2. If you generate multiple responses, you can scroll between them.
The chat is saved in the left-hand menu. You can rename or delete the chat.
To start a new query, click on ‘New chat’ or type into ‘Send a message’ underneath any existing query.

Sample Uses of ChatGPT

Summarize long documents and articles

Prompt: "Summarize the text below and give me a list of bullet points with key insights and the most important facts."

[insert text]

Note: Bing or ChatPDF are likely to be more effective for article summaries.

Brainstorm new ideas

Prompt: "Brainstorm and give me a list of 20 new ideas for [insert desired output e.g. social media posts about your product]."
Train ChatGPT to generate prompts for you

Prompt: "You are an AI designed to help [insert profession]. Generate a list of the 10 best prompts for yourself. The prompts should be about [insert topic]."
Understand things faster by simplifying complex texts (such as research papers and technical documents)

Prompt: "Rewrite the text below and make it easy for a beginner to understand".
Use the 80/20 principle to learn faster than ever

Prompt: "I want to learn about [insert topic]. Identify and share the most important 20% of learnings from this topic that will help me understand 80% of it."
Prepare for a job interview

Prompt: "I am interviewing for [enter position]. Can you give me a comprehensive list of questions interviewers will ask me during this interview? Also, provide brief answers to each question."
Improve your writing

Prompt: [paste your writing] "Proofread my writing above. Fix grammar and spelling mistakes. And make suggestions that will improve the clarity of my writing"
Generate trend graphs

Prompt: "Create a line graph showing search trends for [insert topic] over the last year."
Enhance your problem-solving skills

Prompt: [insert problem] "Give me a step-by-step solution to the problem above with clear instructions on how to execute each step."
Use ChatGPT to Design for Belonging

Role: you are an expert in belonging, equity, and inclusion.

Context: Learners try harder, persist & learn more when: 1. they are not distracted by a sense of isolation, alienation, or exclusion 2. the learning experience actively addresses and challenges stereotypes 3. the learning experience provides a range of resources to reflect diversity of thought, experience & perspective on the topic to avoid cultural, political, racial or other biases.

Task: review the following reading list and diversify and decolonize it. Do this by profiling the author and summarizing cultural, political, racial, and other biases that they may bring to the topic. Suggesting alternative relevant resources on the topic written by a greater and more diverse range of authors. The goal is to ensure that I avoid cultural, political, racial, and other biases in my selection of resources for this course. Only include resources that are from reliable sources and have over 200 citations on Google scholar. Cite your sources and state how many citations the source has on Google Scholar.

[paste your reading list]

Source: Hardman (2023, April 13). A ChatGPT Prompt for Learner Equity.

Flow Chart: Is it Safe to Use ChatGPT?

Considerations when using ChatGPT

Users should also be aware of the privacy policies for various AI tools. For example, ChatGPT, acknowledges that they may share account holders’ personal information with third parties.
Users should never share personal or sensitive information with generative AI chatbots.
As of April 2023, it is now possible to disable ChatGPT’s search history which prevents AI from training on users’ queries.
If your query does not produce the intended result, try changing the prompt(s) and run the query again.
Due to high demand, the free version of ChatGPT may be unavailable or run very slowly.
Data used to train ChatGPT’s responses goes up to 2021. This means ChatGPT has no knowledge about anything that has happened or been created since 2021. However, some browsers that integrate ChatGPT do enable it to connect to more recent information.
ChatGPT can provide incorrect responses and often makes up citations!
There is no way that ChatGPT can verify the information it provides or to assess its reliability.

This work is licensed by Emily Rush under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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