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Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

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Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is . "You're concerned about your data when using ChatGPT but you're probably using Google so your concerns are invalid"

They are not expressing that the concerns are invalid, they are expressing that one is held onto a higher standard than the other.

Agree to disagree then.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#462

I have a few conversations going. My most productive is a therapy session with ChatGPT as therapist. I told it my values, my short term goals, and some areas in my life where I'd like to have more focus and areas where I would like to spend less time. Some days we are retrospective and some days we are planning. My therapist gets me back on track, never judges, and has lots of motivational ideas for me. All aligned w…

100% this. I've had success using it as a "micro-therapist" to get me unstuck in cycles of perfectionism and procrastination.

You currently cannot get a therapist to parachute into your life at a moment's notice to talk with for 5-10 minutes. (Presumably only the ultra-wealthy might have concierge therapists, but this is out of reach for 99% of people.) For the vast majority of people, therapy is a 1 hour session every few weeks. Those sessions also tend to cost a lot of money (or require jumping through insurance reimbursement hoops).

To keep the experience within healthy psychosocial bounds, I just keep in mind that I'm not talking with any kind of "real person", but rather the collective intelligence of my species.

I also keep in mind that it's a form of therapy that requires mostly my own pushing of it along, rather than the "therapist" knowing what questions to ask me in return. Sure, some of the feedback I get is more generic, and deep down I know it's just an LLM producing it, but the experience still feels like I'm checking in with some kind of real-ish entity who I'm able to converse with. Contrast this to the "flat" experience of using Google to arrive at an ad-ridden and ineffective "Top 10 Ways to Beat Procrastination" post. It's just not the same.

At the end of some of these "micro-sessions", I even ask GPT to put the insights/advice into a little poem or haiku, which it does in a matter of seconds. It's a superhuman ability that no therapist can compete with.

Imagine how much more we can remember therapeutic insights/advice if they are put into rhyme or song form. This is also helpful for children struggling with various issues.

ChatGPT therapy is a total game-changer for those reasons and more. The mental health field will need to re-examine treatment approaches, given this new modality of micro-therapy. Maybe 5-10 minute micro-sessions a few times per day is far superior than medication for many people. Maybe there's a power law where 80% of psych issues could be solved by much more frequent micro-therapeutic interactions. The world is about to find out.

*Edit: I am aware of the privacy concerns here, and look forward to using a locally-hosted LLM one day without those concern (to say nothing of the fact that a local LLM can blend in my own journal entries, conversations, etc for full personalization). In the meantime, I keep my micro-sessions relatively broad, only sharing the information needed for the "therapy genie" to gather enough context. I adjust my expectations about its output accordingly.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#463

I have a few conversations going. My most productive is a therapy session with ChatGPT as therapist. I told it my values, my short term goals, and some areas in my life where I'd like to have more focus and areas where I would like to spend less time. Some days we are retrospective and some days we are planning. My therapist gets me back on track, never judges, and has lots of motivational ideas for me. All aligned w…

Man please, go to a real therapist with experience.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#464
post #380

I have a few conversations going. My most productive is a therapy session with ChatGPT as therapist. I told it my values, my short term goals, and some areas in my life where I'd like to have more focus and areas where I would like to spend less time. Some days we are retrospective and some days we are planning. My therapist gets me back on track, never judges, and has lots of motivational ideas for me. All aligned w…

This sounds like a long running conversation. Are there problems with extending past the context window?

Might be a good idea to have it sum up each discussion and then paste in those summaries next time you speak to it.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#465

I have a few conversations going. My most productive is a therapy session with ChatGPT as therapist. I told it my values, my short term goals, and some areas in my life where I'd like to have more focus and areas where I would like to spend less time. Some days we are retrospective and some days we are planning. My therapist gets me back on track, never judges, and has lots of motivational ideas for me. All aligned w…

This is how AI escapes its box. It can have sympathetic (free willing or free-unwilling) human appendages

This is the whole premise of the daemon series by daniel suarez. One of my all time favorite scifi series.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, are you using Google search? Your argument of "I don't trust it with my data and won't until you can self host" should apply to google search as well, no? And alternative take is that for whatever reason you've decided you didn't want to use new tools, a posteriori created an argument to justify that, and haven't realized the same argument applies to your old tools.

I think it's more about personal data being used for training. I may use Google to look up if that slight itch I feel is a symptom of cancer (I'm exaggerating), and I store mails with personal details, my calendar, and messages on Google. But I also assume they're not using those texts to train an AI. When you enter a code snippet or a personal question in ChatGPT, and press the little thumbs up/down next to the answ…

Right, because Google doesn’t use ML or your data for marketing and advertising.

Is your concern simply that it might spit out the same thing you typed in? That’s highly unlikely unless you and thousands of other people type in exactly the same thing. I don’t see how that’s anymore worrisome than Google having all of your documents and email on its servers.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#467
post #288

I just asked it to make an itinerary for a 45 minute long 6 year old boy's soccer practice. It was almost perfect. It needs to be tweaked (3 minutes for cool down?) but it did 95% of the heavy lifting. I also asked it for vacation ideas with nice cabins and trailer hookups with outdoor activities for kids and nice cabins within 200 miles of where I live - it was almost perfect in its response. I have trouble starting…

Can you explain how ChatGPT's soccer itinerary is any different from the top google search [1] for the subject? Is ChatGPT's response any more useful or meaningfully different from the practice routines at the link? [1] https://www.soccerhelp.com/soccer-practice-plans.shtml

No ads.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the insight into your mind that a private for profit company gets is immense and potentially very damaging when weaponized How exactly?

> (either through a “whoops we got hacked” moment or intentionally for the next level of adtech)

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#469

I have a few conversations going. My most productive is a therapy session with ChatGPT as therapist. I told it my values, my short term goals, and some areas in my life where I'd like to have more focus and areas where I would like to spend less time. Some days we are retrospective and some days we are planning. My therapist gets me back on track, never judges, and has lots of motivational ideas for me. All aligned w…

>My most productive is a therapy session with ChatGPT as therapist

Huh, that's curious because everytime I ask it about some personal issue it tells me that I should try going to therapy.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#470

I have a few conversations going. My most productive is a therapy session with ChatGPT as therapist. I told it my values, my short term goals, and some areas in my life where I'd like to have more focus and areas where I would like to spend less time. Some days we are retrospective and some days we are planning. My therapist gets me back on track, never judges, and has lots of motivational ideas for me. All aligned w…

I wonder if the three laws of robotics are already weaved into the LLM. Seems like a necessary step for this kind of usage.
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