As someone who doesn’t sit well with advancing technology, someone who thinks tech is difficult to adapt to, I was mesmerized the first time I used ChatGPT. Today, I use it daily for everything under the sun—whether it’s planning a personal trip, brainstorming for my clients at Weber Shandwick, or pulling out recipes I want to try out.
This made me wonder, is ChatGPT my punching bag? Is it more than mere tech for me? Has it become the Robin to my Batman?
I suddenly felt like I hired an assistant without paying a salary. And I was here for it. It all started with a simple…
I realized the more I treat this AI model like a human, the better output it’ll give me. It was the best decision I’d taken, to treat ChatGPT like a human being, like my intern. I wondered what it could do for my clients and then began a journey of trial, error, anger, achievements, and a whole lot of learning.
The first learning was to treat it like an actual person and ask it if it needs to know anything from you to land on the output you desire.
This is a child who needs to be fed as much information as you can for it to be able to understand you. Sometimes, I got frustrated with this child too. Exhibit A—
Sometimes I questioned it until I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere and that maybe, the knowledge cut-off for this model wasn’t something that could compete with, say, a Google search engine or my half-torn encyclopedia. Exhibit B—
Sometimes I needed a sous-chef and there it was, in grey and white.
In essence, what I learned after 2 years of using ChatGPT almost every day, is that it’s a brilliant starting point. It’s the perfect assistant who can create constellations out of the scattered thoughts in your head. It responds the best when you load it with every speck of information you can and give it briefs like you would to your teammates. While this journey is a constantly evolving process of trial and error, I’ve found that putting in the effort myself often yields the desired outcomes.
So, here’s to our constant learning with the one true sidekick ChatGPT. Whether it’s firefighting with ideas or brainstorming, I’m excited to see where the next chapter takes us cause it’s just the beginning of our story.
Arunima Sharma
