(2023-01-10) Mollick How To Use Chatgpt To Boost Your Writing

Ethan Mollick: How to... use ChatGPT to boost your writing. it also isn’t a human that you are giving instructions to. It is a machine you are programming with words. You are writing a prompt, not having a conversation

More elaborate and specific prompts work better.

Don’t ask it to write an essay about how human error causes catastrophes

you are the expert and the AI is a tool to help you write. You should push it in the direction you want. For example, provide clear bullet points to your argument: write an essay with the following points: -Humans are prone to error -Most errors are not that important -In complex systems, some errors are catastrophic -Catastrophes cannot be avoided

But even these results are much less interesting than a more complicated prompt: write an essay with the following points. use an academic tone. use at least one clear example. make it concise. write for a well-informed audience. use a style like the New Yorker. make it at least 7 paragraphs. vary the language in each one. end with an ominous note. -Humans are prone to error -Most errors are not that important -In complex systems, some errors are catastrophic -Catastrophes cannot be avoided

So try asking for it to be concise or wordy or detailed, or ask it to be specific or to give examples. Ask it to write in a tone (ominous, academic, straightforward) or to a particular audience (professional, student) or in the style of a particular author or publication (New York Times, tabloid news, academic journal). You are not going to get perfect results, so experimenting (and using the little “regenerate response” button)

ChatGPT’s huge advance over other generative AIs is that it has a memory. It keeps track of what you wrote, and appears to remember about 3,000 words worth of data.

Sometimes the memory is useful, you can (and should) ask it to revise previous work: change the third paragraph to be more professional or use a different example in the middle and it will provide a revised version.

Similarly, you might want to break up your requests to the Chatbot into smaller chunks. Ask it for an introduction, and revise that to get the tone that you want to achieve. Only then should you start asking for additional paragraphs.

And if the results of those longer pieces cut off, simply asking ChatGPT to “continue” is enough to get the rest of the material.

Play with personas and style

asking the AI to be someone else.