4 ms·

I say this as someone who does use ChatGPT semi-regularly. All of the use cases mentioned in the article sound kind of terrible, at least with ChatGPT's current

I say this as someone who does use ChatGPT semi-regularly. All of the use cases mentioned in the article sound kind of terrible, at least with ChatGPT's current characteristics. The article says they are using ChatGPT to generate listing descriptions, draft legal documents, and calculate mortgage payments. The value of a description (to me at least) is seeing non-structured information that can't be fit into the standardized fields of the listing. If the description is just being generated from some concise structured data alone then I would rather just read that. This is a perfect example of my main fear about ChatGPT in the short term; that it will fill the internet with meaningless filler text and make it harder to find relevant information. For the legal stuff it seems pretty risky to commit legal drafting to ChatGPT, at least currently. The article mentions they still run it by a lawyer but I'd imagine ChatGPT will be correct enough of the time to make lawyers become complacent and just start rubber-stamping. The mortgage payment use case is just kind of mystifying to me. Math is pretty well understood to be a relative weakness of ChatGPT and calculating mortgage payments is a standardized thing with a small number of inputs that realtors have to do all the time. I don't really get why you would use ChatGPT, which can make a significant mistake, rather than a mortgage calculator.

shapefrog 4y ago
> The value of a description Back in my property searching days; the location, external shot, the floorplan, a couple of grainy indoor photos was the process of browsing for me. The description was always where the turd got polished - Cozy and full of potential - aka tiny and a total mess > using ChatGPT to ... calculate mortgage payments That is truly terrifying given that the maths behind it is pretty basic, and there are multiple online calculators and even if it some secret propriety calculation was needed, then surely agents could just subscribe to it.
- poulsbohemian 4y ago
  >The description was always where the turd got polished - Cozy and full of potential - aka tiny and a total mess Think of these descriptions a bit like a tweet - stupidly brief and pithy. In the two MLSs I belong to, we get a max of about 500 words - so you are generally writing in a clipped form to get your message across. Plus, in our litigious world, you can't say anything but repeating the basic facts about the house. For example, even using words like "perfect place for a retired couple!" or "ideal place to raise your kids!" would be considered discriminatory, even though we know that's exactly who is going to buy this kind of house. Likewise, if we say something like "this is a total money pit but if you are willing to put $100K into it, it's in a great location" we'd get sued or fired by our seller for being a bit too honest. So you end up with these generic, droll descriptions that are useless and smart buyers have to learn to read realtor-speak, IE: "cozy and full of potential! Welcome home!"
poulsbohemian 4y ago
I'm a real estate agent who also has a CS degree and worked in tech for decades and I couldn't agree more - this article is terrible, the use cases are terrible, and I'm left wondering who is trying to profit here in writing articles like this. Every few days I try to use ChatGPT for some piece of real work I'm doing and I'd say at best it's a fun party trick. There's nothing - whether generating code or English text - that I would call useable without significant modification, at which point I'm better off without ChatGPT.

shapefrog 4y ago

> The value of a description Back in my property searching days; the location, external shot, the floorplan, a couple of grainy indoor photos was the process of browsing for me. The description was always where the turd got polished - Cozy and full of potential - aka tiny and a total mess > using ChatGPT to ... calculate mortgage payments That is truly terrifying given that the maths behind it is pretty basic, and there are multiple online calculators and even if it some secret propriety calculation was needed, then surely agents could just subscribe to it.

poulsbohemian 4y ago
>The description was always where the turd got polished - Cozy and full of potential - aka tiny and a total mess Think of these descriptions a bit like a tweet - stupidly brief and pithy. In the two MLSs I belong to, we get a max of about 500 words - so you are generally writing in a clipped form to get your message across. Plus, in our litigious world, you can't say anything but repeating the basic facts about the house. For example, even using words like "perfect place for a retired couple!" or "ideal place to raise your kids!" would be considered discriminatory, even though we know that's exactly who is going to buy this kind of house. Likewise, if we say something like "this is a total money pit but if you are willing to put $100K into it, it's in a great location" we'd get sued or fired by our seller for being a bit too honest. So you end up with these generic, droll descriptions that are useless and smart buyers have to learn to read realtor-speak, IE: "cozy and full of potential! Welcome home!"

poulsbohemian 4y ago

I'm a real estate agent who also has a CS degree and worked in tech for decades and I couldn't agree more - this article is terrible, the use cases are terrible, and I'm left wondering who is trying to profit here in writing articles like this. Every few days I try to use ChatGPT for some piece of real work I'm doing and I'd say at best it's a fun party trick. There's nothing - whether generating code or English text - that I would call useable without significant modification, at which point I'm better off without ChatGPT.