Ask HN: What is a specific use of GPT-4 that you think is remarkable?

Unlike 3.5, GPT-4 is competent at translation. Not just competent; it's better than most human translators. We might not want to leave it to its own devices yet, but there's a large number of novels that were never translated, or were only translated badly.

Personally, I've been setting things up to have it translate a series of light novels from Japanese to English. Experiments through the chat interface show it's working; now I just need API access, to fully automate it.

> GPT-4 is competent at translation

That really depends on the language. It's still kinda awkward at Hungarian. Personally, I think DeepL is still way better at translation.

I've been using it as a discussion machine and a way to cut down search.

My usual loop used to be:

1. Search for X

2. Review documentation and other websites that come up

3. Learn from my review and further refine my search

4. Continue steps over and over until I get what I want

---

My new loop is:

1. Ask ChatGPT about X

2. Use the words that ChatGPT returns to me as search terms

3. Review documentation and other websites that come up

4. Learn from my review, further refine my search, and talk to ChatGPT about it

5. Continue steps over and over until I get what I want

I initially thought that using ChatGPT in such a fashion would lead to a longer amount of time - especially since I'm adding a new tool to my "loop".

Instead, finding and learning what I need is much faster. My old loop I would do 3+ times. The new loop with ChatGPT takes 1-2 times.

When you aren't familiar with X it becomes difficult to know what to search for. Even if you have the docs in front of you, you need to know key terms to search through the docs for.

ChatGPT makes finding key terms to search for much, MUCH easier. Fact checking ChatGPT (for the most part) doesn't take me that many cycles.

I've been using it for long-term memory supplementation. Had a faint memory of driving around in a friend's truck back in high school and was trying to remember a Marilyn Manson song we always played.

Asked it this the other day:

> Are there any other marilyn manson songs with a crowd shouting?

And it spit out:

===

Yes, Marilyn Manson has used the sound of a crowd shouting in several other songs besides "The Beautiful People." Here are a few examples:

"Irresponsible Hate Anthem" - This song, which appears on the album "Antichrist Superstar," opens with the sound of a crowd chanting "Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate!" before launching into a heavy industrial metal riff.

"The Fight Song" - Another track from the "Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)" album, "The Fight Song" features a crowd chanting "Marilyn Manson" before the song begins.

"This Is the New Shit" - This song, from the album "The Golden Age of Grotesque," features a chorus that includes the sound of a crowd shouting "Are you motherfuckers ready for the new shit?"

These are just a few examples, as Marilyn Manson has used the technique of incorporating crowd shouting in several of his songs throughout his career.

===

I'm highly skeptical of GPT/LLM as a replacement for humans at the task-level, but for search, this can't be beat. It replied almost instantaneously.

Even more shocking: I think this will seriously destroy Google and the concept of SEO. That's extraordinary considering how pivotal Google is to the internet of today. This is the beginning of the OS in the movie Her.

Why would you do that when you can dispatch your own AI to argue for you?