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ChatGPT: the scariest software ever?
Artificial Intelligence has always disappointed me - the future of humanity has always seemed secure against the machines - until now …

Posted by Andy Brown on 28 March 2023

In this blog

Getting Started with ChatGPT
Paying for better service
ChatGPT as poet
Getting help with your software
Getting help with your hardware
ChatGPT as philosopher
Fun with ChatGPT

ChatGPT: the scariest software ever

Throughout my (long!) career in software, the promise of Artificial Intelligence has been just that: a promise. ChatGPT changes everything, as the examples in this blog will show.

Getting Started with ChatGPT

To try out ChatGPT (the GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer, which might not actually help that much) just go to the OpenAI website and click on this link:

Hover over this link and it appears in reverse video.

Be warned that you might be unlucky:

If you get this message, you'll just have to come back later!

You can enter your email to sign up for an account. You then still get free access, but without having to wait ... so long.

Paying for better service

As with so many things in life, you can pay to get a better response:

The subscription cost at the time of writing.

This gives you a fancy falling petal effect:

Your reward for paying money ... falling petals.

And (when available) access to the Chat GPT-4 engine:

GPT-4 currently has a cap of 25 messages every 3 hours. A message warns you to "expect significantly lower caps, as we adjust for demand."

ChatGPT as poet

So one of the first things I asked ChatGPT to do was to write a limerick about Wise Owl Training:

Not bad for about 3 seconds of work!

The rap was less successful, I thought:

This took significantly longer to write (10-20 seconds).

Getting help with your software

This is where ChatGPT started getting scary. Think your programming job is safe? Maybe not if you're using SQL:

2-3 seconds to generate this ...

Of course it works the other way round:

I asked ChatGPT to translate a fairly typical stored procedure into English - here are the (impressive) results.

Sadly, this works for every language I've tried. This C# program took about 30 seconds to generate (it was ChatGPT's decision to change the formatting of the answer to look like code):

The program includes bonus error-trapping, and is written in a concise and elegant way. I couldn't have done this better myself, but would have spent some time doing it worse.

Getting help with your hardware

I have been on a mission for some time now to disable the NumLock key on my laptop. Here's what ChatGPT suggests:

This is far better and more concise help than I could get from Google - no wonder Alphabet (the company behind Google) are so worried!

ChatGPT as philosopher

A frequent discussion in the Brown family household: is a dead slug still a slug? Here's ChatGPT's take on the subject:

This is probably the one which scared me the most, as it manages to capture the nuance in the question and gives a very sensible answer.

Fun with ChatGPT

Wonder what your cat is thinking? In poetry?

There were 3 more verses, but you get the idea. How can software possibly do this?

Is Die Hard a Christmas film? This response would kill off any remaining argument:

A balanced summary of the opposing arguments!

Spending time in the company of ChatGPT4 is a bit soul-destroying: not only do the grim forecasts of films like The Matrix seem that bit less far-fetched, but it also utterly lacks any humanity or sense of humour!

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