This newsletter may or may not have been written by a human.

“I always write from my own experiences, whether I've had them or not.”

―Ron Carlson

By now, unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve heard about ChatGPT, the AI system that has been taking the world by storm since December. It’s in the headlines everyday now. Most teachers and content writers already hate it. Google thinks it is code red for their search business.

I’ve been playing around with it since it was launched and since I’m no longer on Twitter, I’ve had time to think about its capabilities in a bit of detail. TLDR: I think generative AI is one of the truly transformational technologies of our current times. It’s the subject of my next column — my 75th for Hindustan Times which will be published this week. :)

Sure ChatGPT has limitations, but its detractors are missing the point. Most of the criticisms of ChatGPT skirt the basic question— should any AI system aspire to be neutral, omniscient, and powerful or should it be like a supersmart human being? If it is the latter, then it will be fallible, wrong, and opinionated, but useful and entertaining. ChatGPT talks like an actual person with actual experiences (only in this case its experiences are what it has been trained on).

So today for the rest of my newsletter, instead of actually using my own brain and writing something which takes energy and increases cognitive load, I’m going to share some of what I’ve asked ChatGPT to do. Some of the queries I ran multiple times on different days to see if the text changed. This newsletter may be a little long so you may need to view it in a browser.

Out of curiosity, one of the first things I asked ChatGPT to do was to tell me what books and articles Anirban Mahapatra might write about. It neatly listed 9 possible topics (one which is actually something I am writing about). ;-)

There are things ChatGPT is not good at yet including creative writing. For some topics it has the confidence of a WhatsApp Uncle. But it is still fascinating and its capabilities will get better this year.

So here goes…

Here’s keeping things loose and light. I asked ChatGPT to come up with several synopses for Bollywood movies and it did pretty good. :)

Why does this sound so familiar?

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Then I moved on to the next Indian obsession- cricket. For some reason, ChatGPT likes to create very dramatic last ball and last wicket victories.

This is missing a “tracer bullet” but in the end cricket is the winner.

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How would it do in creating a “don’t @ me Twitter hottake”?

Oooh diplomatic, are we.

Then I got into more serious stuff. I asked it what are the hottest areas of science. And it churned out a perfectly good response. Something I might’ve Twitter-threaded back in the old days.

What about poetry? Decent. Passable for a kid in seventh or eighth grade who is trying too hard.

And then I got down to business. What are topics someone might be interested in? I could’ve just as easily asked it to write coherent essays on any one of those topics. They’d have been coherent but bland.

There’s also the opportunity for constant time-pass. In fact, ChatGPT is a wonderful conversational companion for many. :)

Sometimes, ChatGPT is like your retired uncle who went to IIT and has every solution for every problem that modern society faces. And he writes letters to the editors of every newspaper to tell everyone.

But other times, ChatGPT is remarkable. Take a look at the response below. This is very similar to something I had written about a few years ago. ChatGPT is very good at coming up with responses to philosophical questions. You can have long Socratic dialogues with it. And it has some guidance if you’re feeling sad or lonely.

But all of this is fine and theoretical. How can ChatGPT help you? What if you’ve forgotten a friend’s birthday or can’t be bothered to write a long comment on a colleague’s retirement. ChatGPT has you covered.

I could go on and on. But I think you get the gist. Anyway, I also put ChatGPT to the ultimate test— asking it to write an ending of this newsletter. A bit flowery for my taste, but it will do.

Stay well!

Anirban