ChatGPT is not the answer to all your writing needs

As Open AI’s platform gains in popularity, ChatGPT is increasingly being used by individuals in their personal and professional lives, such as for exams or at work. With simple questions or clear instructions, generated answers are quite good, if not excellent. However, many users let their guard down and abuse their trust in the tool. Not all sectors can use it with absolute trust and as the ultimate answer to their needs. Let us explain why.

What is ChatGPT?

According to ChatGPT itself: “ChatGPT is an advanced language model developed by OpenAI. It is based on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture, specifically GPT-3.5.” 

“It has been trained on a diverse range of internet text data to understand and generate human-like responses. ChatGPT is designed to engage in conversations, answer questions, provide explanations, assist with tasks, and offer various forms of language-based interactions.”

“By leveraging its vast knowledge base, ChatGPT can provide information on a wide range of topics, including science, history, technology, current events, and more. It can also understand context, generate coherent responses, and exhibit conversational abilities. While ChatGPT strives to be helpful and accurate, it’s important to note that it may occasionally produce incorrect or nonsensical answers. Therefore, it’s always a good idea to verify information from reliable sources.”

ChatGPT is a flexible tool for many different uses. In the face of this surprising efficiency, some abuse it and fail to realize its limitations, which itself mentions. Having such confidence in a tool based on unreliable data can discredit the expertise of the person using it.

ChatGPT’s limitations

Despite the performance of ChatGPT’s answers, not all of them can be taken at face value, depending on the field of expertise. As previously mentioned, one of ChatGPT’s limitations lies in the veracity of its answers, especially when it comes to information such as important references and sources like scientific research or legal texts. What’s more, its database is drawn mainly from information available on the Internet, which, as we know, is full of both good sources and false information. It is therefore difficult to distinguish the true from the false when the answer generated by ChatGPT seems clear and reliable. That’s why it’s important to be vigilant.

ChatGPT seeks to provide an answer, regardless of the nature of its source. If it feels it doesn’t have the answer to your question in its database, it will still provide you with leads to find that answer. 

In short, you could say that ChatGPT has the answer to everything, but not all its answers are reliable, because “ChatGPT is a jack of all trades, but master of none”. So it’s important to be careful how you use it, and not to take all its answers as absolute truths.

How to use ChatGPT effectively

Using ChatGPT indiscriminately and for any purpose is not a viable long-term approach. It’s essential to preserve the human aspect. That’s why ChatGPT should be used as an assistance tool to produce a task more quickly, rather than replacing it entirely.

Although the quality of responses correlates with an information-rich prompt, it is crucial to always review the information generated and take into account its limitations. Using ChatGPT for general tasks is a good way of saving time, but specific tasks should remain those of human beings.