Spo-reflections on Chat Gpt

Note: I am up to my oxters with matters at work so there hasn’t been time for blogging or anything else for that matter, worse luck. Here is a half-baked entry inspired by a youngster who once asked me how much of my blog is done using Chat GPT. Rather than pulverizing him with a chair, I started this entry. Spo

Before we begin, I should point out I have no idea what I am talking about.

I regularly listen to podcasts that constantly talk about Chat Gpt. By now you would think by I would understand what it is and what it does, but I don’t. Listening to the pundits on the podcasts I feel like I am overhearing a conversation at a nearby table in a diner: I am getting the words but not following the conversation.

So far as I know I have never consciously used Chat GPT. Someone states he uses it all the time, such as composing volunteer booklets and handouts, that sort of thing. After twenty years of online writing, I believe I know how to write careful prose (although typos continue to happen) and I don’t need a program to tell me how to do it. It reminds me of the time I witnessed the temerity of a ten year old trying to teach her grandmother how to cook better.

The latest news about Chat Gpt is it is going start showing advertisements. I think that would be quite annoying viz. in the middle of writing a paragraph an ad pops up for something, probably related to what is being written. As I have already mentioned, this is not my problem nor my concern.

Someone also tells me he uses Chat Gpt to write his emails. It’s a mercy I don’t write many, and when I do I subscribe to the notion to make emails simple, succinct, and to the point – like my men. I am told they seem ‘cold’ or even ‘rude’ until folks realize what I am doing. A few lines doesn’t strike me as needing Chat Gpt assistance.

Of course, I shouldn’t poo-poo something until I’ve tried it. I remember my late father turning up his nose at his first calculator, a instrument the size of a brick. He didn’t see the point of a calculator when he was a wiz with numbers. He would do his taxes first using the calculator and then afterwards checking its accuracy with his own calculations, not the other way around. Over time the calculator became less hostile (and less heavy) to the point of using one came without thought; it evolved into a ‘how on earth did we function beforehand? device.

Maybe if I tried Chat Gpt I would feel the same in time. I wonder where one goes to find it?

P.S.: I did not write this with Chat Gpt: I wrote it myself. Thems who say otherwise are itching for a fight.

Do you use Chat CPT?