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I lack imagination. What is GPT-3 (and generative text models in general) useful for, other than toys? It can write essays, can we expect it to replace writer

I lack imagination. What is GPT-3 (and generative text models in general) useful for, other than toys? It can write essays, can we expect it to replace writers for newspapers and magazines? Can it write coherent technical documentation? Replace speechwriters? Edit: looks like the comment thread below is similar https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32554955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32554955

renewiltord 4y ago
My friend used it to "explain like I'm 5" a medical report he had. I sent that to my dad (a surgeon in that specialty) and he said it was all accurate. I thought that was interesting. But I think the principal use for me is CoPilot.
machineleaning 4y ago
Marketing copy - https://www.copy.ai/ https://www.copy.ai/ Coding help - https://github.com/features/copilot https://github.com/features/copilot
simonw 4y ago
I wrote a few notes in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32554955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32554955 Here's one that I find personally really interesting: Imagine you have a disability, and the government agencies responsible for helping you have denied your claim. You need to write them a letter. You don't have much (if any) experience writing letters to government agencies, so you're finding that task challenging. GPT-3 can write that letter for you, and it will de a really good job of it. Of course, you need access to GPT-3 and you need to learn how to drive it with prompts, so this isn't necessarily an easy thing. But I think it helps lean in the direction of the kind of benefits people can get from this class of technology outside of just playing with the AI.
- aabhay 4y ago
  How is this different or more useful than providing a template with madlibs-style fill in the blanks?
  - dr_dshiv 4y ago
    Because you can tell GPT3 what the concept is — ie, vaguely what you are going for and it will produce. Waaay more flexible than a template.
    - aabhay 4y ago
      Still requires you to have an understanding of the concept, an understanding of how to prompt GPT-3, and how to verify the accuracy/veracity of the claims the AI model makes.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - simonw 4y ago
    Because providing a template requires someone with knowledge of that particular problem space (in this case "writing letters to government agencies to inquire about disability benefits") to put in the work of designing the template, coming up with likely placeholders and predicting how people might need to use it. GPT-3 can do a good job of this all today, without any additional training. An expert could help out by providing a few example prompts, but the result would be a lot more powerful and require a lot less development work to put together than trying to build some kind of placeholder wizard from scratch.
    - aabhay 4y ago
      A madlibs is more predictable, requires only one example, easy to understand for people with language issues or disabilities, more regulation-safe as it doesn't spit out unpredictable things. And the madlibs is free to use, for everyone. All things considered, GPT-3 is a more of a shibboleth of AI revolution than an actual one. Much better to give models like GPT-NeoX to talented development teams who can really optimize and fine tune it, attach great sampling strategies to it, and create great products from there. The API is just too limited for me to want to build a company atop it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dr_dshiv 4y ago
It’s incredibly good at generating scholarly text. Put in a title and abstract and it will come up with a strong intro that is clear and compelling. It helps me write academic papers more clearly, as a result. Also, great for early stages of grant writing or proposals. It came up with a fantastic conference proposal for me that I spent 20 minutes editing and then just sent, unedited. It will aid speechwriters or help more people write their own speeches, I guess. Assuming that AI tech is a person replacement is, IMO, the wrong mental model. It helps talented people be more efficient. And will help a lot of hacks “fake it till they make it.” Power to the people, if they can handle it.
- matthewmacleod 4y ago
  It came up with a fantastic conference proposal for me that I spent 20 minutes editing and then just sent, unedited. Was this comment written by GPT-3? (That said - are all comments written by GPT-3?)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - DaSHacka 4y ago
    I assume what was meant was that they spent 20 minutes editing it, before realizing it was perfect as it was originally and sent the unedited copy.
  - layer8 4y ago
    > Was this comment written by GPT-3? You should submit that to GPT-3 as a prompt.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  I also asked it to help me write a letter to my homesick daughter at summer camp. It was really helpful. I feel that GPT3 has an enviable degree of emotional intelligence, nuance and conceptual understanding. Writing and communicating effectively with people is very hard. Our own emotions get in the way. Now we have technology that can help people be better communicators with each other. It’s a big deal.
mg 4y ago
GPT-3 is useful for a lot of things. It can write essays, it can write technical documentation, it can write speeches, it can write fiction, it can write poetry, it can write jokes, it can write jokes about jokes, it can write jokes about jokes about jokes, it can write jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes, it can write jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes, it can write jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes, it can write jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes. This answer was written by GPT-J when I gave it the following prompt: question: I lack imagination. What is GPT-3 (and generative text models in general) useful for, other than toys? It can write essays, can we expect it to replace writers for newspapers and magazines? Can it write coherent technical documentation? Replace speechwriters? answer:
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  This is hilarious.
- layer8 4y ago
  At least it didn’t go into an infinite loop. Maybe there’s explicit logic to prevent that.
  - keepquestioning 4y ago
    What are thresholds used in generative text to stop generating characters?
    - layer8 4y ago
      Must be a bit more sophisticated than that, as it forms a complete sentence.
    - ml_basics 4y ago
      I'm not sure about GPT-3 specifically, but often these models are trained with an explicit "stop token", which the model can output when generating text to indicate that no more text should be produced. That said, there's no reason it couldn't go into an infinite loop, just that the models are pretty sophisticated and therefore are less likely to do this than earlier generations of models (like predictive text on smart phones in the past)
alexb_ 4y ago
In a few years, when a generative text model that's actually open is made, erotic text will 100% be a main use. But of course people don't like thinking about that...
- SamPatt 4y ago
  I don't think porn is as bad as some people say, but there are downsides, and good quality erotica seems like a healthier alternative. Whether a human or a computer writes it seems unimportant.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
floxy 4y ago
Maybe someone should ask GPT-3 what it is good for?
Traubenfuchs 4y ago
It’s been out 2 years already and the non-toy application with the biggest mass appeal is the glorified autocomplete / google shortcut Copilot. Anyone being honest should admit it (was) more hot air and hype than reality.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  I think GPT3 is just as amazing as DALLE, but gets less public awareness because the things it creates requires critical reading. Which makes me think: everyone needs to teach kids to speed read. And develop their bullshit detectors.
patientplatypus 4y ago
dan_mctree 4y ago
I've used it a bit to help with creativity. For example, I wanted to brainstorm some unit designs and gameplay mechanics for a RTS game I wanted to build. I prompted GPT-3 with an interview with a game designer where unit designs and mechanics were discussed. For a prompt I used a few questions and answers and then a single question I wanted GPT-3 to answer for me. After a few attempts with slight variations it spat out a bunch of ideas for me. While few of the designs were fully worked out and immediately usable, a couple of suggestions by GPT-3 were able to spark enough creativity to create some cool things. My favorite reply was: "A: I think the best example of this is the ability to swap positions with a friendly unit. This ability can be used in so many different ways. You can use it to support an ally, or you can use it to escape a tricky situation. You can use it to surprise an enemy by swapping with a unit they didn't expect, or you can use it to put yourself in a better tactical position. It's a simple idea, but it actually turns the whole game on its head."
tedsanders 4y ago
As someone who's used the models a fair bit (I work at OpenAI), I mentally sort applications into four buckets: - Generative use cases, where you give the model the kernel of an idea and then you curate its output (e.g., blog writing, code completion, etc.) - Extractive use cases, where you give the model some big piece of text, and then process it in some way (e.g., extract names and addresses, classify it, ask a question about the text) - Transformational use cases, where you need to fix/adjust a piece of text, or translate from one domain to another (e.g., sometimes I'll use GPT-3 for little tasks like copying and pasting a table from a presentation and then asking the model to translate it to markdown; saves me a visit to Google and finding some table generator website) - Comparisons, where you use embeddings to do search/clustering/recommendations over any set of strings (e.g., can combo nicely with the Q&A use case above, where you search over a knowledge base) I started a repo here with some barebones examples of each: https://github.com/openai/openai-cookbook/ https://github.com/openai/openai-cookbook/ If you're looking for examples of commercial applications, OpenAI published two blog posts highlighting a few: - GPT-3 use cases (2021): https://openai.com/blog/gpt-3-apps/ https://openai.com/blog/gpt-3-apps/ - Codex use cases (2022): https://openai.com/blog/codex-apps/ https://openai.com/blog/codex-apps/
- nicksrose7224 4y ago
  This is a really nice breakdown -- I made a little side project that falls into your "Extractive" and "Comparisons" bucket: https://www.tripwise.me/ https://www.tripwise.me/ My tools uses GPT-3 to dig through Airbnb reviews to find the "cons" of staying at a particular place and summarize them neatly. You can also ask any question at all in natural language about all the listings you're evaluating. I'm bookmarking your repo for future reference, this is very useful
leesec 4y ago
Write now it's a great writing-assist tool. Eventually all the rest.
alecco 4y ago
Besides all the ideas of well meaning people in HN, I fear GPT-3 (and its competitors) will just bring almost impossible to spot fake Amazon reviews, SEO garbage sites, fake blogs, fake podcasts, etc. And even worse, now corporations and governments don't even need to have troll farms. Just rent some AI, give it basic directions, and let it loose. The Dead Internet Theory will become real.
- nicksrose7224 4y ago
  i think this is a bit pessimistic. You can also use GPT-3 or similar technologies to much more easily train a fine-tuned "real vs fake" review classifier with fewer training examples than was previously necessary. GPT-3 like all tech is double-edged I think. Has good & bad things about it
  - moonchrome 4y ago
    I doubt this will happen - at some point the generated content should be indistinguishable from human written text - and AI can produce it in droves and learn to exploit existing algorithms.
- visarga 4y ago
  Until Google starts to expect better garbage from SEO providers. The bot can simply ask a language model if the page looks well written and truthful. So SEOs will have to spam us with well written useful articles about topics we like. Maybe Google should require webmasters to mark the automated content with a special HTML tag or attribute. Failure to comply leading to deranking. This would be necessary for the future - to know what data was human generated when training the next model, and to have official reason for penalising spammers who try to pass artificial text as human written.
- reidjs 4y ago
  Most of these seem preventable. 1. Stop ordering things from Amazon, support local stores instead of reading reviews. 2. Stop reading SEO’d sites, go to the source when possible 3. Only read your friends blogs and listen to your friends podcasts.
kleiba 4y ago
Language models are few-shot learners.

renewiltord 4y ago

My friend used it to "explain like I'm 5" a medical report he had. I sent that to my dad (a surgeon in that specialty) and he said it was all accurate. I thought that was interesting. But I think the principal use for me is CoPilot.

machineleaning 4y ago

Marketing copy - https://www.copy.ai/ https://www.copy.ai/ Coding help - https://github.com/features/copilot https://github.com/features/copilot

simonw 4y ago

I wrote a few notes in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32554955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32554955 Here's one that I find personally really interesting: Imagine you have a disability, and the government agencies responsible for helping you have denied your claim. You need to write them a letter. You don't have much (if any) experience writing letters to government agencies, so you're finding that task challenging. GPT-3 can write that letter for you, and it will de a really good job of it. Of course, you need access to GPT-3 and you need to learn how to drive it with prompts, so this isn't necessarily an easy thing. But I think it helps lean in the direction of the kind of benefits people can get from this class of technology outside of just playing with the AI.

aabhay 4y ago
How is this different or more useful than providing a template with madlibs-style fill in the blanks?
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  Because you can tell GPT3 what the concept is — ie, vaguely what you are going for and it will produce. Waaay more flexible than a template.
  - aabhay 4y ago
    Still requires you to have an understanding of the concept, an understanding of how to prompt GPT-3, and how to verify the accuracy/veracity of the claims the AI model makes.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- simonw 4y ago
  Because providing a template requires someone with knowledge of that particular problem space (in this case "writing letters to government agencies to inquire about disability benefits") to put in the work of designing the template, coming up with likely placeholders and predicting how people might need to use it. GPT-3 can do a good job of this all today, without any additional training. An expert could help out by providing a few example prompts, but the result would be a lot more powerful and require a lot less development work to put together than trying to build some kind of placeholder wizard from scratch.
  - aabhay 4y ago
    A madlibs is more predictable, requires only one example, easy to understand for people with language issues or disabilities, more regulation-safe as it doesn't spit out unpredictable things. And the madlibs is free to use, for everyone. All things considered, GPT-3 is a more of a shibboleth of AI revolution than an actual one. Much better to give models like GPT-NeoX to talented development teams who can really optimize and fine tune it, attach great sampling strategies to it, and create great products from there. The API is just too limited for me to want to build a company atop it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dr_dshiv 4y ago

It’s incredibly good at generating scholarly text. Put in a title and abstract and it will come up with a strong intro that is clear and compelling. It helps me write academic papers more clearly, as a result. Also, great for early stages of grant writing or proposals. It came up with a fantastic conference proposal for me that I spent 20 minutes editing and then just sent, unedited. It will aid speechwriters or help more people write their own speeches, I guess. Assuming that AI tech is a person replacement is, IMO, the wrong mental model. It helps talented people be more efficient. And will help a lot of hacks “fake it till they make it.” Power to the people, if they can handle it.

matthewmacleod 4y ago
It came up with a fantastic conference proposal for me that I spent 20 minutes editing and then just sent, unedited. Was this comment written by GPT-3? (That said - are all comments written by GPT-3?)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- DaSHacka 4y ago
  I assume what was meant was that they spent 20 minutes editing it, before realizing it was perfect as it was originally and sent the unedited copy.
- layer8 4y ago
  > Was this comment written by GPT-3? You should submit that to GPT-3 as a prompt.
dr_dshiv 4y ago
I also asked it to help me write a letter to my homesick daughter at summer camp. It was really helpful. I feel that GPT3 has an enviable degree of emotional intelligence, nuance and conceptual understanding. Writing and communicating effectively with people is very hard. Our own emotions get in the way. Now we have technology that can help people be better communicators with each other. It’s a big deal.

mg 4y ago

GPT-3 is useful for a lot of things. It can write essays, it can write technical documentation, it can write speeches, it can write fiction, it can write poetry, it can write jokes, it can write jokes about jokes, it can write jokes about jokes about jokes, it can write jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes, it can write jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes, it can write jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes, it can write jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes about jokes. This answer was written by GPT-J when I gave it the following prompt: question: I lack imagination. What is GPT-3 (and generative text models in general) useful for, other than toys? It can write essays, can we expect it to replace writers for newspapers and magazines? Can it write coherent technical documentation? Replace speechwriters? answer:

nonethewiser 4y ago
This is hilarious.
layer8 4y ago
At least it didn’t go into an infinite loop. Maybe there’s explicit logic to prevent that.
- keepquestioning 4y ago
  What are thresholds used in generative text to stop generating characters?
  - layer8 4y ago
    Must be a bit more sophisticated than that, as it forms a complete sentence.
  - ml_basics 4y ago
    I'm not sure about GPT-3 specifically, but often these models are trained with an explicit "stop token", which the model can output when generating text to indicate that no more text should be produced. That said, there's no reason it couldn't go into an infinite loop, just that the models are pretty sophisticated and therefore are less likely to do this than earlier generations of models (like predictive text on smart phones in the past)

alexb_ 4y ago

In a few years, when a generative text model that's actually open is made, erotic text will 100% be a main use. But of course people don't like thinking about that...

SamPatt 4y ago
I don't think porn is as bad as some people say, but there are downsides, and good quality erotica seems like a healthier alternative. Whether a human or a computer writes it seems unimportant.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

floxy 4y ago

Maybe someone should ask GPT-3 what it is good for?

Traubenfuchs 4y ago

It’s been out 2 years already and the non-toy application with the biggest mass appeal is the glorified autocomplete / google shortcut Copilot. Anyone being honest should admit it (was) more hot air and hype than reality.

dr_dshiv 4y ago
I think GPT3 is just as amazing as DALLE, but gets less public awareness because the things it creates requires critical reading. Which makes me think: everyone needs to teach kids to speed read. And develop their bullshit detectors.

patientplatypus 4y ago

dan_mctree 4y ago

I've used it a bit to help with creativity. For example, I wanted to brainstorm some unit designs and gameplay mechanics for a RTS game I wanted to build. I prompted GPT-3 with an interview with a game designer where unit designs and mechanics were discussed. For a prompt I used a few questions and answers and then a single question I wanted GPT-3 to answer for me. After a few attempts with slight variations it spat out a bunch of ideas for me. While few of the designs were fully worked out and immediately usable, a couple of suggestions by GPT-3 were able to spark enough creativity to create some cool things. My favorite reply was: "A: I think the best example of this is the ability to swap positions with a friendly unit. This ability can be used in so many different ways. You can use it to support an ally, or you can use it to escape a tricky situation. You can use it to surprise an enemy by swapping with a unit they didn't expect, or you can use it to put yourself in a better tactical position. It's a simple idea, but it actually turns the whole game on its head."

tedsanders 4y ago

As someone who's used the models a fair bit (I work at OpenAI), I mentally sort applications into four buckets: - Generative use cases, where you give the model the kernel of an idea and then you curate its output (e.g., blog writing, code completion, etc.) - Extractive use cases, where you give the model some big piece of text, and then process it in some way (e.g., extract names and addresses, classify it, ask a question about the text) - Transformational use cases, where you need to fix/adjust a piece of text, or translate from one domain to another (e.g., sometimes I'll use GPT-3 for little tasks like copying and pasting a table from a presentation and then asking the model to translate it to markdown; saves me a visit to Google and finding some table generator website) - Comparisons, where you use embeddings to do search/clustering/recommendations over any set of strings (e.g., can combo nicely with the Q&A use case above, where you search over a knowledge base) I started a repo here with some barebones examples of each: https://github.com/openai/openai-cookbook/ https://github.com/openai/openai-cookbook/ If you're looking for examples of commercial applications, OpenAI published two blog posts highlighting a few: - GPT-3 use cases (2021): https://openai.com/blog/gpt-3-apps/ https://openai.com/blog/gpt-3-apps/ - Codex use cases (2022): https://openai.com/blog/codex-apps/ https://openai.com/blog/codex-apps/

nicksrose7224 4y ago
This is a really nice breakdown -- I made a little side project that falls into your "Extractive" and "Comparisons" bucket: https://www.tripwise.me/ https://www.tripwise.me/ My tools uses GPT-3 to dig through Airbnb reviews to find the "cons" of staying at a particular place and summarize them neatly. You can also ask any question at all in natural language about all the listings you're evaluating. I'm bookmarking your repo for future reference, this is very useful

leesec 4y ago

Write now it's a great writing-assist tool. Eventually all the rest.

alecco 4y ago

Besides all the ideas of well meaning people in HN, I fear GPT-3 (and its competitors) will just bring almost impossible to spot fake Amazon reviews, SEO garbage sites, fake blogs, fake podcasts, etc. And even worse, now corporations and governments don't even need to have troll farms. Just rent some AI, give it basic directions, and let it loose. The Dead Internet Theory will become real.

nicksrose7224 4y ago
i think this is a bit pessimistic. You can also use GPT-3 or similar technologies to much more easily train a fine-tuned "real vs fake" review classifier with fewer training examples than was previously necessary. GPT-3 like all tech is double-edged I think. Has good & bad things about it
- moonchrome 4y ago
  I doubt this will happen - at some point the generated content should be indistinguishable from human written text - and AI can produce it in droves and learn to exploit existing algorithms.
visarga 4y ago
Until Google starts to expect better garbage from SEO providers. The bot can simply ask a language model if the page looks well written and truthful. So SEOs will have to spam us with well written useful articles about topics we like. Maybe Google should require webmasters to mark the automated content with a special HTML tag or attribute. Failure to comply leading to deranking. This would be necessary for the future - to know what data was human generated when training the next model, and to have official reason for penalising spammers who try to pass artificial text as human written.
reidjs 4y ago
Most of these seem preventable. 1. Stop ordering things from Amazon, support local stores instead of reading reviews. 2. Stop reading SEO’d sites, go to the source when possible 3. Only read your friends blogs and listen to your friends podcasts.

kleiba 4y ago

Language models are few-shot learners.