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Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 31, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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  1. How often do you use generative AI, and is it for leisure or work?
  2. How are you using it, and how deep down the prompt engineering rabbit hole have you gone?
  3. What is your favorite model?

Sadly, in my workplace, use cases in descending order of frequency are: Generating funny images for powerpoint slides > generating funny names for things > asking scientific questions. I subscribed to Chatgpt4 and have been using it a fair amount over the last several months, and while it is quite helpful, it's far from accelerating my work in a largely meaningful way. I'm curious whether people have any recommendations for other models or specific prompts beyond 'take a deep breath and answer step by step' or 'my grandmother will die if I get this wrong.'

I certainly use GPT-4 for impromptu medical lessons and debates, and to sometimes have a intelligent bouncing board for my ideas. It's also great for just asking random questions on topics that would otherwise take far more effort or reliance on the kindness of strangers.

I use image generation mostly to create art I enjoy, to illustrate hilarious visuals from Xianxia or to create pieces for my own work.

Sadly (or happily), it doesn't augment my productivity in my day job particularly much, but that'll inevitably change.

If you're looking for fiction, Claude Opus is great. It convincingly manages to emulate my own style from short excerpts, and does a good job at writing overall. Far less LLM-y when it comes to tone too. I suspect it can do more, but I'm not paying $24 a month to find out, when GPT-4 via Bing is free.