ChatGPT for Writers

ChatGPT for Writers

a robot at a typewriter, in the style of a cartoon from the 1950s
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Just in case you haven’t recently looked up from your writing to procrastinate on the Internet, there’s a new thing out there: AI-generated text. And Chinese “weather” balloons. This post is about the former, or more specifically, ChatGPT (or AI) for writers.

One of the most popular AI-generated text websites out there right now (maybe because there’s a free version?) is ChatGPT.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI. It’s designed to generate human-like text responses to questions and prompts given to it.

You can find this same AI technology in chatbots and virtual assistants to provide instant and automated responses to users.

ChatGPT has been trained on a large corpus of text data, allowing it to understand and respond to a wide variety of topics in a conversational manner. The goal of ChatGPT is to provide quick and accurate information to users in a human-like manner, making the interaction feel more natural and intuitive.

What Can ChatGPT Do for Writers?

ChatGPT can assist writers in several ways, such as generating ideas for stories, suggesting words or phrases to enhance writing, completing sentences or paragraphs, and even writing entire articles or stories based on a prompt.

On the latter, don’t. You may have read articles about people writing whole books using AI, but, well, they aren’t very good. I suppose they might get a whole bunch of five-star reviews from other AI-reviewers out there (is that a thing yet?), but you’re a writer.

You want to write.

What ChatGPT can help you with is by passing off repetitive text (e.g., data tables, lists), allowing you more time to focus on more creative tasks. You know, the fun stuff.

Additionally, ChatGPT can assist with language-related tasks such as grammar checking, vocabulary expansion, and even translation. Maybe you’re looking for a theme in one of your stories? AI can help.

These capabilities make ChatGPT and other AI text generators a valuable tool for writers who are looking to increase efficiency, improve their writing, or generate new ideas.

What Should Writers NOT Do with ChatGPT or Any AI?

While ChatGPT can be a useful tool for you as a writer, it’s important to keep in mind that it should not be relied on exclusively.

ChatGPT is a machine learning model and its output is only as good as the data it was trained on. Garbage in, garbage out (and there is a whole lot of garbage that’s already out there). As a result, it may produce text that is grammatically incorrect, culturally insensitive, or even offensive.

You also shouldn’t use ChatGPT to plagiarize or pass off its output as your own original work without proper attribution. This goes against ethical and legal standards for writing and can result in serious consequences.

Most importantly, don’t rely solely on ChatGPT for your writing, as the model does not have the creativity, nuance, or personal perspective that is unique to human writers. Your voice, perspective, and writing style are important aspects of your work and cannot be replicated by a machine.

Examples of Using ChatGPT as a Writer

I’ve been using ChatGPT for a few months to some varying degrees of success. Here are two real cases as they apply to writing. (Note: I have also used it to help me with complicated Excel formulas, coding, and pointing me in the right direction to find relevant information needed for work.)

Determining a Population Given a Starting Sample

Recently, I wanted to know how much a colony would grow given certain variables. I needed to cross 55 years between my novel All We Leave Behind: Transits of Three and the fourth novel. I asked the friendly AI the following:

under similar living conditions as the ancient Israelites, how many people would exist in a society in 55, 155, and 255 years with a starting point of 13 men and 13 women who are between 15 and 35 years old?

The answer was…um…underwhelming. I won’t even repeat it here. It was annoyingly bad. Not to be dissuaded, however, I added a bit more information.

estimate given a mortality rate of 10%, a birth rate of 20 per year, no war and sufficient food and water

Now I was getting somewhere. ChatGPT gave me the following:

Thank you for the caveat.

I was just getting started. I asked it to give me a bit more information, then vary the responses based on a life expectancy of 50 years. Next, I wanted this same information for several different starting populations.

create a table with a starting point of 26 people (equal men and women), 48 people (equal), and 60 people (equal)

The nice thing here was that ChatGPT remembered what I had been going on about and filled in a bunch of blanks.

chatGPT for writers

There’s that caveat again, but I see we’re getting somewhere. I decided to dig a little deeper.

repeat the table with the group of 26 having a high mortality rate and a life expectancy of 50 years, the group of 48 having a medium mortality rate and a life expectancy of 70 years and the group of 60 having a very low mortality rate and a life expectancy of 90 to 100 years; include the life expectancy in the table

Here was the result:

Taking all that into account, I chose to ask for formulas I could plug into Excel so that I could create tables and set the mortality and birth rates randomly. I also wanted to account for various “events” throughout the 55 year time span.

My result is that after 55 years, a group that started with 26 people would have a population of around 212 following a famine, a year of disease, and a migration of unhappy people.

Very helpful!

Trying to Find a Quote

Here’s where things went south on me.

give me a quote about hurricanes preferably from the 18th or 19th century from a verifiable source

The answer:

chatGPT for writers

Okay. But I know something not many people know about ChatGPT: it infers.

where is that quote from?

This is what I mean:

Holy… Okay. I’m not done.

how about a quote on weather on exoplanets

chatGPT for writers

can you verify that

chatGPT for writers

where did you get that quote?

chatGPT for writers

After a while of this, I got frustrated. The nice part about ChatGPT is that it doesn’t mind if I get snippy.

I don’t want a quote that is anything but something I can look up… a direct quote from an author with a source

Guess what happened?

are you sure that is the right issue?

chatGPT for writers

Aaargh!

My Advice to Writers Using ChatGPT or Any AI

Do not for a minute think that you cannot verify the answers you are given. Because I was really curious as to why the latter conversation happened, I asked ChatGPT.

why would chatGPT have errors

chatGPT for writers

I will need to verify that response.


ChatGPT for Writers
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