6 ms·

I have started incorporating ChatGPT into my side project. I'm not integrating it into software or anything like that, but using it as a tool for product ideas,

I have started incorporating ChatGPT into my side project. I'm not integrating it into software or anything like that, but using it as a tool for product ideas, product photo ideas, funny social media captions, figuring out the best hashtags to use, product tagging and categorization. It has proven to be a great way to get everything to around 70%, then send off to my assistant for the remaining 30% of polish. So at $20/month, it was such a no-brainer, that I had to do it. Even at $75/mo it would more than pay for itself. It even understands the concept of a "shit post". So - its more social media savvy than I am, thats for sure.

javajosh 4y ago
It's almost like ChatGPT is nerd-sniping us all. But we like it and it's useful to us.
- consp 4y ago
  Don't generalize, I've never used it and never seen any reason to use it.
  - seattle_spring 4y ago
    My grandma has never used the internet and sees no reason to use it. It would benefit her immensely to use it.
    - tinideiznaimnou 4y ago
      [dead]
  - coldpie 4y ago
    You should give it a shot, keep an open mind. Yes, it will get things wrong and yes, it will disappoint you. But every conversation I've had with it holds some surprises for me. It's a tool you'll need to learn to use before it actually becomes useful, but give it a couple minutes a few times a week and you'll start to see the diamonds in the rough.
    - cleanchit 4y ago
      Damn, they released the hypno drones already?
      - coldpie 4y ago
        Sorry, I don't get the reference(?).
        gnulinux 4y ago
        It's a reference to the incremental game "Universal Paperclip". This is when something like "AI singularity" is reached in the game.
        rvbissell 4y ago
        UP is one of the few modern games that I've wanted to play more than once.
        gnulinux 4y ago
        Yep, factorio and UP are the only games I played more than only a few hours.
      - jermaustin1 4y ago
        Thanks, now my day is going to be wasted.
    - egeozcan 4y ago
      If you ever write code that starts with #include <windows.h> then it is a must have.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dpkirchner 4y ago
    Generalizing is perfectly ok. Having to wrap statements with terms like "almost all" or "most" adds unnecessary noise, outside of academia.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    I've used it out of curiosity, but have no real use case for it.
- Swizec 4y ago
  Nerd-snipe and useful? That’s the holy grail! We’re having fun and we’re solving real problems that we have. Amazing. I’ve already incorporated it into my publishing process. My home-grown “cms” uses ChatGPT (via API) to write my article description, draft a twitter thread, and craft a “viral insight”. The latter is mostly useful to make sure my article even makes a point. Hoping to use it for a related articles feature next. I’m also building a chatbot based on my content.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    > Nerd-snipe and useful? That’s the holy grail! Yes. i think its a good software product! Maybe one of the best there ever was - I'm not surprised Sam Altman jumped the YC ship for this one, or that MS is particularly interested it. It gets ignored in all the other bru-haha but I'm excited to see what the really talented software teams of the world will be able to accomplish with an AI coding assisstent - and I don't mean just in the world of AI. The activation energy for new software lowered by about 30% overnight, which is outrageously cool, and of course disquieting.
    - zamnos 4y ago
      Especially for new software in a different language than you already know or haven't used years, in a realm other than your current area of expertise. It's pretty useful to be able to directly ask it how do to, eg basic string manipulation in $new_language, but even more convenient is to ask it to do the transformation for you. "Given a string of the format X, write a $language snippet that outputs X'." It'll do more advanced things than that, but that's one area I found it to be useful and time-saving in an unfamiliar language because it saves me from looking up that boilerplate before getting to the part where I throw a regexp at the problem.
mnky9800n 4y ago
I paid for it, then stopped paying for it. It seemed to be completely novel and fun to use but after a while it just became a pain. I tried writing a library to act as a code assistant for data science but trying to get it to write the codes that were useful to me took around the same amount of time as writing them myself. What you say is completely correct, it gets to around 70% of whatever you ask it to do then you have to finish the job for it. Which I guess is nice. But I'm not going to pay 20$/month for something that i can just use for free that amounts to slightly better intellisense. For text generation, it is much better for tasks like * letter writing * rewriting my writing so i don't plaigerize myself * summarizing several paragraphs into one but all of that is available in the free version.
- BlackSwanMan 4y ago
  The cheap version does all of that much worse. I don't understand how people can be so cheap.
  - kylecazar 4y ago
    There are so many subscription products these days that it makes sense to assess the value of each carefully before committing. If you're like me you tend to forget you're paying for something, and have to do a yearly purge. It's very easy to slowly but surely rack up hundreds of dollars a month in subscription services.
    - bemmu 4y ago
      My habit is to cancel right away when I start a subscription. You can still use the service for the month you paid for, and it's easy to restart it if you do still find yourself attempting to use it a month later.
      - dqft 4y ago
        Substack disappointed me because you can't do this. They remove content access if you do not have an "active" subscription. You don't have to pay again to "reactivate", but the paid content is locked until you do. This is obviously intended dark behavior because when I went to fully unsub later in the month they gave me a special dialog and a free month hoping for me to forget again this month. Very lame.
octopoc 4y ago
I've been using it for product ideas as well. Occasionally it's brilliant but sometimes it's so bad it's funny, like when it suggested Seven-Year Itch for a perfume brand.
- jermaustin1 4y ago
  I actually like to make the bad ones. It is fun. It is an exercise in creative engineering. Especially since my side project is making home goods for stoners.
- mym1990 4y ago
  Don't they say something about seemingly brilliant ideas being too obvious or usually not working out, and the terrible ones being the ones that are have more potential to be diamonds in the rough?
- phkahler 4y ago
  >> it's so bad it's funny, like when it suggested Seven-Year Itch for a perfume brand. Yeah, what's wrong with that? I'm sure it would be catchy to a particular demographic. No need for a brand to cater to everyone.
  - fennecfoxy 4y ago
    But also it would heavily depend on the context they gave it when asking it to generate that. Because GPT is capable of: doing marketing, math, science stuff, programming and anything else to a junior-semi advanced level, it needs to be prompted and given context to get it into the right "mood" for doing what you want it to. There's a huge difference between casually chatting to it about various topics before suddenly asking what a good perfume brand would be. Versus providing it with the fragrances used in the perfumes that the brand makes, the general goals/image that the company wants to set, their target demographic etc and _then_ asking for a brand name suggestion. I'd be keen to see how they asked.
- williamcotton 4y ago
  That is a great name for a perfume brand! It’s also the name of a comedy by Billy Wilder staring Marylyn Monroe. Market it to rich old ladies.
noloblo 4y ago
archive link unpaywall : https://archive.ph/Txq8r https://archive.ph/Txq8r better source : https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/04/18/1326235/microsoft-readies-ai-chip-as-machine-learning-costs-surge https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/04/18/1326235/microsoft-r...
robomartin 4y ago
> It has proven to be a great way to get everything to around 70%, then send off to my assistant for the remaining 30% of polish. So at $20/month, it was such a no-brainer, that I had to do it. Yup. I bought accounts for everyone here. We are using it as what I have been calling a "force multiplier". We are not and cannot use it for coding, yet, things like presentations, analyzing logs, creating lists of things, researching topics, etc. It's a great time saver. Also, for a lot of things ChatGPT is a much better search engine than Google. It gets you great answers and almost always the first time you ask. In case the question comes up: We don't use it for coding because of potential liability concerns. At this point I feel that is a space that has not been explored at all. I have no interest in being a pioneer in a lawsuit that claims negligence due to the use of AI-generated code, even if it is reviewed by a human. The combination of fear-mongering and tech-challenged juries could make for very expensive outcomes. I posed a question about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35655521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35655521
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  As long as you train everyone to understand that it hallucinates and that you need to double check any numbers or other real facts.

javajosh 4y ago

It's almost like ChatGPT is nerd-sniping us all. But we like it and it's useful to us.

consp 4y ago
Don't generalize, I've never used it and never seen any reason to use it.
- seattle_spring 4y ago
  My grandma has never used the internet and sees no reason to use it. It would benefit her immensely to use it.
  - tinideiznaimnou 4y ago
    [dead]
- coldpie 4y ago
  You should give it a shot, keep an open mind. Yes, it will get things wrong and yes, it will disappoint you. But every conversation I've had with it holds some surprises for me. It's a tool you'll need to learn to use before it actually becomes useful, but give it a couple minutes a few times a week and you'll start to see the diamonds in the rough.
  - cleanchit 4y ago
    Damn, they released the hypno drones already?
    - coldpie 4y ago
      Sorry, I don't get the reference(?).
      - gnulinux 4y ago
        It's a reference to the incremental game "Universal Paperclip". This is when something like "AI singularity" is reached in the game.
        rvbissell 4y ago
        UP is one of the few modern games that I've wanted to play more than once.
        gnulinux 4y ago
        Yep, factorio and UP are the only games I played more than only a few hours.
    - jermaustin1 4y ago
      Thanks, now my day is going to be wasted.
  - egeozcan 4y ago
    If you ever write code that starts with #include <windows.h> then it is a must have.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dpkirchner 4y ago
  Generalizing is perfectly ok. Having to wrap statements with terms like "almost all" or "most" adds unnecessary noise, outside of academia.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I've used it out of curiosity, but have no real use case for it.
Swizec 4y ago
Nerd-snipe and useful? That’s the holy grail! We’re having fun and we’re solving real problems that we have. Amazing. I’ve already incorporated it into my publishing process. My home-grown “cms” uses ChatGPT (via API) to write my article description, draft a twitter thread, and craft a “viral insight”. The latter is mostly useful to make sure my article even makes a point. Hoping to use it for a related articles feature next. I’m also building a chatbot based on my content.
- javajosh 4y ago
  > Nerd-snipe and useful? That’s the holy grail! Yes. i think its a good software product! Maybe one of the best there ever was - I'm not surprised Sam Altman jumped the YC ship for this one, or that MS is particularly interested it. It gets ignored in all the other bru-haha but I'm excited to see what the really talented software teams of the world will be able to accomplish with an AI coding assisstent - and I don't mean just in the world of AI. The activation energy for new software lowered by about 30% overnight, which is outrageously cool, and of course disquieting.
  - zamnos 4y ago
    Especially for new software in a different language than you already know or haven't used years, in a realm other than your current area of expertise. It's pretty useful to be able to directly ask it how do to, eg basic string manipulation in $new_language, but even more convenient is to ask it to do the transformation for you. "Given a string of the format X, write a $language snippet that outputs X'." It'll do more advanced things than that, but that's one area I found it to be useful and time-saving in an unfamiliar language because it saves me from looking up that boilerplate before getting to the part where I throw a regexp at the problem.

mnky9800n 4y ago

I paid for it, then stopped paying for it. It seemed to be completely novel and fun to use but after a while it just became a pain. I tried writing a library to act as a code assistant for data science but trying to get it to write the codes that were useful to me took around the same amount of time as writing them myself. What you say is completely correct, it gets to around 70% of whatever you ask it to do then you have to finish the job for it. Which I guess is nice. But I'm not going to pay 20$/month for something that i can just use for free that amounts to slightly better intellisense. For text generation, it is much better for tasks like * letter writing * rewriting my writing so i don't plaigerize myself * summarizing several paragraphs into one but all of that is available in the free version.

BlackSwanMan 4y ago
The cheap version does all of that much worse. I don't understand how people can be so cheap.
- kylecazar 4y ago
  There are so many subscription products these days that it makes sense to assess the value of each carefully before committing. If you're like me you tend to forget you're paying for something, and have to do a yearly purge. It's very easy to slowly but surely rack up hundreds of dollars a month in subscription services.
  - bemmu 4y ago
    My habit is to cancel right away when I start a subscription. You can still use the service for the month you paid for, and it's easy to restart it if you do still find yourself attempting to use it a month later.
    - dqft 4y ago
      Substack disappointed me because you can't do this. They remove content access if you do not have an "active" subscription. You don't have to pay again to "reactivate", but the paid content is locked until you do. This is obviously intended dark behavior because when I went to fully unsub later in the month they gave me a special dialog and a free month hoping for me to forget again this month. Very lame.

octopoc 4y ago

I've been using it for product ideas as well. Occasionally it's brilliant but sometimes it's so bad it's funny, like when it suggested Seven-Year Itch for a perfume brand.

jermaustin1 4y ago
I actually like to make the bad ones. It is fun. It is an exercise in creative engineering. Especially since my side project is making home goods for stoners.
mym1990 4y ago
Don't they say something about seemingly brilliant ideas being too obvious or usually not working out, and the terrible ones being the ones that are have more potential to be diamonds in the rough?
phkahler 4y ago
>> it's so bad it's funny, like when it suggested Seven-Year Itch for a perfume brand. Yeah, what's wrong with that? I'm sure it would be catchy to a particular demographic. No need for a brand to cater to everyone.
- fennecfoxy 4y ago
  But also it would heavily depend on the context they gave it when asking it to generate that. Because GPT is capable of: doing marketing, math, science stuff, programming and anything else to a junior-semi advanced level, it needs to be prompted and given context to get it into the right "mood" for doing what you want it to. There's a huge difference between casually chatting to it about various topics before suddenly asking what a good perfume brand would be. Versus providing it with the fragrances used in the perfumes that the brand makes, the general goals/image that the company wants to set, their target demographic etc and _then_ asking for a brand name suggestion. I'd be keen to see how they asked.
williamcotton 4y ago
That is a great name for a perfume brand! It’s also the name of a comedy by Billy Wilder staring Marylyn Monroe. Market it to rich old ladies.

noloblo 4y ago

archive link unpaywall : https://archive.ph/Txq8r https://archive.ph/Txq8r better source : https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/04/18/1326235/microsoft-readies-ai-chip-as-machine-learning-costs-surge https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/04/18/1326235/microsoft-r...

robomartin 4y ago

> It has proven to be a great way to get everything to around 70%, then send off to my assistant for the remaining 30% of polish. So at $20/month, it was such a no-brainer, that I had to do it. Yup. I bought accounts for everyone here. We are using it as what I have been calling a "force multiplier". We are not and cannot use it for coding, yet, things like presentations, analyzing logs, creating lists of things, researching topics, etc. It's a great time saver. Also, for a lot of things ChatGPT is a much better search engine than Google. It gets you great answers and almost always the first time you ask. In case the question comes up: We don't use it for coding because of potential liability concerns. At this point I feel that is a space that has not been explored at all. I have no interest in being a pioneer in a lawsuit that claims negligence due to the use of AI-generated code, even if it is reviewed by a human. The combination of fear-mongering and tech-challenged juries could make for very expensive outcomes. I posed a question about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35655521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35655521

coffeebeqn 4y ago
As long as you train everyone to understand that it hallucinates and that you need to double check any numbers or other real facts.