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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 use it every day, mostly for work. I don't do much prompt engineering. I don't usually find it necessary and it's very difficult to get it to to do what you want anyway. For example, no matter how much I insist I don't like lists, ChatGPT insists on explaining things with lists. I use it mostly for finding bugs in code and for telling me how to do something simple that I don't know or don't remember how to do. I also sometimes ask it to do things that are a little complicated that I am not sure how to do. This is very hit or miss, but might give me an idea for a better way to do it. Anything too complex, it can't handle.

Less often, I use it as a better Google search. There are certain kinds of things it is way better at getting information on. I also use it to take pictures of things and tell me what they are or to ask questions about it.

People are work use it to write emails for them, but I don't do this because it takes me just as long to write the email myself as it does to explain to ChatGPT what to write, and I'll do a better job anyway.

My favourite model is ChatGPT-4, because it is the only advanced LLM I can use in Canada.