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Ask HN: What are your thoughts on ChatGPT as a professional?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your thoughts on ChatGPT as a professional?

#61

Post by fragmede »

dns_snek wrote: post #54
DrAwdeOccarim wrote: post #34

I work in biotech and at my company, specifically our CEO, for over a decade has constantly asked all of us, "How are you leveraging AI in your job?". So much so that we used to joke about it. Well, when ChatGPT arrived, something happened. Everyone at the company (now about 5000 people) were already primed, looking for how they could finally answer "Yes" to our obsessive CEO. We have a deep roster of professional so…

> become reliant on it This is terrible advice. To be reliant on something is to be helpless when that thing stops working or is taken away. That's never a smart thing to do willingly, never mind enthusiastically. By all means, learn how to leverage it productively, but be mindful not to become reliant on it.

So make sure it keeps working and isn't taken away. LLMs aren't going away. I'm reliant on my car to get to work. I don't have back up car just in case.

Re: Ask HN: What are your thoughts on ChatGPT as a professional?

#63

Post by aragilar »

fragmede wrote: post #61
dns_snek wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> become reliant on it This is terrible advice. To be reliant on something is to be helpless when that thing stops working or is taken away. That's never a smart thing to do willingly, never mind enthusiastically. By all means, learn how to leverage it productively, but be mindful not to become reliant on it.

So make sure it keeps working and isn't taken away. LLMs aren't going away. I'm reliant on my car to get to work. I don't have back up car just in case.

But you have insurance right? Does that include a temporary one while it's being fixed? If so, you do have a back up car.

Re: Ask HN: What are your thoughts on ChatGPT as a professional?

#64

Post by coolThingsFirst »

muzani wrote: post #26
coolThingsFirst wrote: post #23

It makes mistakes all the time even for simple tasks.

Whenever someone says this, I always wonder whether we're talking about the same tool. GPT-3.5 scores at the bottom 10% in a lot of tasks where GPT-4 scores in the top 10%.

I mean chatGPT I don’t pay for the better version if it exists

Re: Ask HN: What are your thoughts on ChatGPT as a professional?

#65

Post by DrSiemer »

NatSydenham wrote: post #12

I find it's great for very generic work, like boilerplate or where you have forgotten how to implement a specific single, well defined algorithm. However, relying on its output is very risky if you aren't verifying everything it puts out. A good test to show this is to ask it to write a short essay on something you know very well , then behold all the incorrect information it enthusiastically tries to feed you. Also:…

Making an LLM explain parts of new code I don't understand has taught me a lot of useful new tricks and methods.

It's own code output will generally work for things that have been done before, but quickly fall apart when you are trying to create something new. You'll need to write a lot of pseudo code to make that work, which is actually excellent training as well.

It really does help if you instruct the language model to be honest and to not do it's very best to please you.

I have not found a solution to the repeating incorrect answer loop yet, although some environments offer a "banned response" list, that can mitigate the situation a bit.

As to the OPs question, yes, definitely use it! But more importantly, learn how to use it. Your approach sounds reasonable and similar to mine. Companies that ban the use of LLMs or developers that scoff at it's benefits are delusional.

Something that is easier to use might come eventually, but in the short term future I expect we will see a clear separation between developers with strong grammatical skills who have learned how to prompt and those without the ability or the experience.

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