How I use ChatGPT — Models and Morality

I came across a couple of studies on Twitter recently about the effects that AI chatbots have on productivity.

One showed that ChatGPT narrowed the performance gap between low-performing and high-performing BCG employees - it helped everyone but it helped the poor performers more
Another shows that low-skill contact center workers benefited more from an AI conversational assistant than skilled wokers

This matches with my personal experience using ChatGPT (which I’ve been doing increasingly over the past week or so).

ChatGPT does not make me great at the things I am good at. It makes me ok at the things I am bad at.

I basically use ChatGPT to teach me about things that I don’t know much about. It’s a much faster version and personalized version of Google. Here are some examples:

Explain to me what a fiber bodied truck is
Explain how instant coffee is made
- Google could have gotten me the first-level answer here, but ChatGPT was great because I had lots of specific follow up questions that it could answer
Explain how a contextual bandit algorithm works from first principles, how it is distinct from other types of recommendation algorithms, and why it is called “contextual banditry”
Are personalized recommendation algorithms more relevant in developed countries vs developing countries? If so, why?
Analyze the macro-economic risk of investing into a company in Pakistan. How do the risks differ vs investing in Kenya? Vs Nigeria?

All of these are things I don’t know that much about. ChatGPT is great at getting me to an ok level of knowledge. But it is not useful for helping me at the core parts of my job - creating a sales pitch for Kapu agents, or understanding the issues that Kapu customers face.

I personally find this very enriching - I’m able to learn random things much more quickly and in a personalized way. It’s like having a generally knowledgeable person I can just constantly ask random questions and get informed (though not perfectly accurate) answers.

If there is a more general trend I draw from this, it is that tools like ChatGPT are enabling a lot of people to become passable at a wide variety of things. This is very exciting!