First, what is ChatGPT?

It's a large language model that can generate human-like responses to natural language queries, making it possible for you to converse with as it were a human. ChatGPT has been trained on vast amounts of internet archive text data up to 2021 using a deep learning algorithm called the Transformer model. This training data allows it to understand the meaning, context, words, and sentences to generate coherent and relevant responses. You can use it to create creative ideas with it. Magical, isn't it?

Where to find it?

Navigate to chat.openai.com/chat. Once an account is created, you can use the free tier to prompt queries.

What's a Prompt?

Suppose you Google search for something like "Uses of Computation Modelling in Cognitive Psychology." to write a brief report. You'll receive many results on the internet related to the topic. That's just a basic query. Though it gives millions of matching results, it takes time to collectively put out some meaningful words. But ChatGPT can help us do this way quicker. And it helps us understand a topic or a subject better.

There are a few ways you create a prompt. You can have a casual conversation with ChatGPT by building up a context like this: -

But you can be more creative than this. You could create a prompt like: -

And this is what it generated: -

This is just an example prompt. You can be more creative than this :). You can limit words, tell it to incorporate specific keywords, or transition into different contexts. Learning how to create effective prompts is a skill you keep developing & refining over time.

More prompts

When time allows, you should review this Twitter thread by Rob Lennon. He explains how you can create clever prompts to generate more cohesive texts.

So, my thoughts?

ChatGPT is just a large language model. It doesn't generate any new knowledge. It presents what is already out there in a form that is easier to digest.

Sometimes it is not 100% accurate, and it may generate false information, and sometimes it tends to repeat the same explanation over and over. Also, it has limited knowledge up to 2021. Because of that, you need to know what accurate and inaccurate information is before proceeding with generated content. However, for me, it's a helpful research sidekick.

Although this tool is convenient in unimaginable ways, nothing beats a human's critical thinking abilities. We must use this tool effectively and focus on what we are trying to learn.