Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

These new chattering bots like ChatGPT are great word multipliers. Do we need word multipliers? That is the question.

Try this at home:

• “Tell ChatGPT” to give me 500 words on topic X.
• Ask ChatGPT to give me the top five points of those 500 words.
• For each of the five points, tell ChatGPT to give me 500 words.

I am now up to 2,500 words in ten minutes. In another ten minutes I will have 5,000 words. In an hour I will have 50,000 words. 50,000 words is a book. There, done it. I wrote a book using a software tool in an hour.

If I push this idea, I can produce an encyclopedia in a day or two.

But wait, I already have an encyclopedia. Why do I want to make another one? ChatGPT mimics the world’s encyclopedias. Did we do anything there or just mimic a mimic and end where we started?

I’m starting to confuse myself.

These chattering things are great at multiplying words. Start with a sentence and have a book in an hour. Wow! I guess that is an accomplishment. Or is it? Is that book worth having? These are too many questions for a rainy Saturday morning.