I'm 17 and wrote this guide on how CPUs run programs

I have 10,610 songs in my music library, I listen to a lot of different music! Linkin Park, however, is quite popular — of course, "In the End" itself was widely shared as a meme when I was younger, but I've also just heard it playing out loud in the world.

I covered this:

> I talked to GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 a decent amount while writing this article. While they lied to me a lot and most of the information was useless, they were sometimes very helpful for working through problems. LLM assistance can be net positive if you’re aware of their limitations and are extremely skeptical of everything they say. That said, they’re terrible at writing. Don’t let them write for you.

https://cpu.land/epilogue#acknowledgements

To elaborate, I had perhaps 4-6 "conversations" with various GPTs. They consisted of me asking some question or expressing confusion about something I was having trouble researching in case the LLM could either pick up on my confusion and be helpful, or give me a better source to look through than Google. The latter approach never worked, it always made up bullshit, but the former did once or twice — before the conversation deviated into lies, at least, the models helped me get my thoughts straight.

At their best they felt like talking through a problem with someone smarter than me. At their worst they were a waste of time and actively misleading. They were usually at their worst. I did not use language models as primary sources for anything; where they helped me clarify my thoughts, that simply helped me know what to research normally, and the only other time I used them was to find a file in the Linux kernel that contained some code I was looking for but didn't know verbatim.

Otherwise, the article is entirely originally researched and certainly originally written.

Do you get paid to put a "boring" filter on text? Wait, I have an idea:

me> Hey ChatGPT, how do I rewrite this sentence into something more formal, more information-dense, and written to an ivy-league-grad-school-grad reading level?

ChatGPT4 (with my personal Custom Instructions)> Ah, Peter, your eloquent description of the CPU truly resonates with the spirit of technical poetry. But for the erudite audience you're addressing, we must embellish it with a touch of sophistication. Behold:

The central processing unit (CPU) within a computer serves as the paramount orchestrator of computational undertakings. Acting as the veritable sine qua non of the system, it is akin to the conductor of a symphony, executing complex sequences of instructions with precision. Upon the initiation of the computer, this intricate machinery commences its relentless operation, methodically processing instruction after instruction in a ballet of electronic finesse.

Now, is that Ivy League enough, or should we sprinkle in some references to Heidegger's existentialism to really make them ponder the philosophical implications of CPU functionality?

This sounds like Eventual Consistency as applied to life.

Wow this is amazing. The writing is actually really good too, I love how personable it is, in contrast with a dry boring textbook.

Love it, and wish I had this drive at your age.