4 ms·

What are people actually using GPT-3 for?

breck 4y ago
1. Generating text content for websites and blogs 2. Translating documents from one language to another 3. Writing e-mails, letters, and other forms of correspondence 4. Crafting resumes and cover letters 5. Writing marketing materials, such as brochures and flyers 6. Responding to comments on HN. (I added the last one)
- seibelj 4y ago
  Is any of that actually going to be a massive industry-defining feature? Marketing blogs are already negative value to me, relying on AI to write something as important as my resume is a non-starter, and marketing emails already go straight to the trash. I'm very impressed with the AI image generation, but again, it replaces... stock art for blog posts? If I was a creative writer then I think the AI could help me with plot outlines or get over writing blocks. But otherwise I'm not grasping why this is going to automate some huge number of jobs.
  - insightcheck 4y ago
    > "If I was a creative writer then I think the AI could help me with plot outlines or get over writing blocks. But otherwise I'm not grasping why this is going to automate some huge number of jobs." Writing definitely looks like the key use case. The New Yorker used GPT-3 to write the concluding sentence for one of their articles [0], and I believe The Economist did the same (but for a slightly greater length; though I couldn't find the source just now). It's actually a bit hard to come up with a good conclusion, so this could save some effort and trouble. Separately, GPT-3 can also likely be used for articles about sports, especially if the purpose is to track changes on a scoreboard and present the changes with an article written in prose, versus displayed in a table. It's quite fair that marketing blogs may not be interesting to many readers, but they can be useful for SEO/boosting the search engine rankings of a website. So, a cash-strapped early or small company could save money from freelance copywriting to GPT-3 if they're not looking for anything fancy, and a lot of people work as freelance copywriters. I agree that this may not displace anyone in the high-end/high quality segment of copywriting, but it could reduce demand for content farms in the future (i.e. any application where low-quality copywriting written on a short notice is in-demand). [0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14/can-a-machine-learn-to-write-for-the-new-yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14/can-a-machine-...
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  None of these usecases are things I want to be on the receiving end of. Ick.
- nonameking2026 4y ago
  Did gpt3 write the first 5 ones ?
aaroninsf 4y ago
I can comment that a friend teaching college philosophy said his department is eliminating papers at the undergraduate level, because it is now too easy to generate-then-polish papers at that level. They're too good in other words: better than baseline even. And when touched up by a student who's putting in a modest effort, are disruptively better.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Could that have something to do with the subjective nature of philosophy? (IANAP)
  - elefanten 4y ago
    Probably has more to do with how slowly the field evolves (esp. wrt what undergrads are learning)... so I imagine there's a huge training corpus for what is ultimately a very limited number of meaningful assignments to give.
nicksrose7224 4y ago
I am using it for a little project to make deciding between Airbnbs easier: https://www.tripwise.me/ https://www.tripwise.me/ You basically just enter in the Airbnb URLs you're considering, and it'll use GPT-3 to scrape through the reviews in order to find anything negative or positive people are saying about the listings. You can also ask any question you want at all, and it'll return answers (if people have mentioned it in their reviews). For example "Is the air conditioning loud?" I would love to hear what others are using GPT-3 for!

1. Generating text content for websites and blogs 2. Translating documents from one language to another 3. Writing e-mails, letters, and other forms of correspondence 4. Crafting resumes and cover letters 5. Writing marketing materials, such as brochures and flyers 6. Responding to comments on HN. (I added the last one)

seibelj 4y ago
Is any of that actually going to be a massive industry-defining feature? Marketing blogs are already negative value to me, relying on AI to write something as important as my resume is a non-starter, and marketing emails already go straight to the trash. I'm very impressed with the AI image generation, but again, it replaces... stock art for blog posts? If I was a creative writer then I think the AI could help me with plot outlines or get over writing blocks. But otherwise I'm not grasping why this is going to automate some huge number of jobs.
- insightcheck 4y ago
  > "If I was a creative writer then I think the AI could help me with plot outlines or get over writing blocks. But otherwise I'm not grasping why this is going to automate some huge number of jobs." Writing definitely looks like the key use case. The New Yorker used GPT-3 to write the concluding sentence for one of their articles [0], and I believe The Economist did the same (but for a slightly greater length; though I couldn't find the source just now). It's actually a bit hard to come up with a good conclusion, so this could save some effort and trouble. Separately, GPT-3 can also likely be used for articles about sports, especially if the purpose is to track changes on a scoreboard and present the changes with an article written in prose, versus displayed in a table. It's quite fair that marketing blogs may not be interesting to many readers, but they can be useful for SEO/boosting the search engine rankings of a website. So, a cash-strapped early or small company could save money from freelance copywriting to GPT-3 if they're not looking for anything fancy, and a lot of people work as freelance copywriters. I agree that this may not displace anyone in the high-end/high quality segment of copywriting, but it could reduce demand for content farms in the future (i.e. any application where low-quality copywriting written on a short notice is in-demand). [0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14/can-a-machine-learn-to-write-for-the-new-yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14/can-a-machine-...
candiddevmike 4y ago
None of these usecases are things I want to be on the receiving end of. Ick.
nonameking2026 4y ago
Did gpt3 write the first 5 ones ?

aaroninsf 4y ago

I can comment that a friend teaching college philosophy said his department is eliminating papers at the undergraduate level, because it is now too easy to generate-then-polish papers at that level. They're too good in other words: better than baseline even. And when touched up by a student who's putting in a modest effort, are disruptively better.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
Could that have something to do with the subjective nature of philosophy? (IANAP)
- elefanten 4y ago
  Probably has more to do with how slowly the field evolves (esp. wrt what undergrads are learning)... so I imagine there's a huge training corpus for what is ultimately a very limited number of meaningful assignments to give.

nicksrose7224 4y ago

I am using it for a little project to make deciding between Airbnbs easier: https://www.tripwise.me/ https://www.tripwise.me/ You basically just enter in the Airbnb URLs you're considering, and it'll use GPT-3 to scrape through the reviews in order to find anything negative or positive people are saying about the listings. You can also ask any question you want at all, and it'll return answers (if people have mentioned it in their reviews). For example "Is the air conditioning loud?" I would love to hear what others are using GPT-3 for!