Don't Use ChatGPT Until You Watch This Video

Leila Gharani
21 Sept 202313:39

TLDRThe video script offers a guide on optimizing interactions with ChatGPT by using custom instructions to tailor responses to user preferences, such as profession, region, and desired tone. It highlights the importance of clear prompts and demonstrates how providing examples of one's writing style can improve the AI's output. The script also emphasizes the value of concise communication, offering tips on controlling response length and formatting, including the use of tables and code snippets. By illustrating these methods, the video aims to enhance user efficiency and satisfaction when utilizing ChatGPT.

Takeaways

  • 📝 Utilize custom instructions to inform ChatGPT about your background and preferences, avoiding repetitive clarifications.
  • 🎯 Specify your desired tone, formality level, and response length in custom instructions for tailored answers.
  • 💡 Set clear guidelines for ChatGPT, such as providing only the most efficient solutions without lengthy explanations.
  • 🔍 Include your regional context to receive responses relevant to your location, without disclosing personal details.
  • 📈 Request the confidence level of ChatGPT's answers and ask for source URLs when dealing with factual topics.
  • 🖋️ Teach ChatGPT your writing style by providing examples, enabling it to produce content that reflects your personal voice.
  • 🔎 Use ChatGPT as a self-critic to analyze and improve its own text based on your feedback.
  • 🤔 Employ self-prompting to optimize prompts and obtain more effective outputs from ChatGPT.
  • ✏️ When asking ChatGPT to write, maintain control over the word count to avoid overly lengthy replies.
  • 📊 Specify the desired output format, such as tables, CSV, HTML, JSON, or XML, to suit your needs.
  • 📈 The quality of outputs from ChatGPT is highly dependent on the quality of the inputs, emphasizing the importance of well-crafted prompts.

Q & A

  • What is the main issue with using ChatGPT without custom instructions?

    -Without custom instructions, ChatGPT may provide poor quality answers that are not tailored to the user's specific needs, leading to wasted time and frustration due to back-and-forth interactions.

  • How can custom instructions improve the interaction with ChatGPT?

    -Custom instructions allow users to provide context about themselves, their profession, location, and preferences for the AI's response style, ensuring more relevant and efficient interactions without needing to repeat preferences in every conversation.

  • What kind of information should a user include when setting up custom instructions for ChatGPT?

    -Users should include their occupation, relevant context about their work or region, their preferred level of formality or casualness, and whether they want the AI to have opinions or remain neutral. This helps ChatGPT provide responses that are better aligned with the user's needs.

  • How does specifying your preferences for Excel formulas save time when using ChatGPT?

    -By specifying that ChatGPT should provide only the most efficient formula without any explanation, users who are already proficient in Excel can quickly get the needed solution without unnecessary details, thus saving time.

  • What is the benefit of asking ChatGPT to inform you about the confidence level of its answers?

    -Knowing the confidence level of ChatGPT's answers helps users assess the reliability of the information provided. Additionally, when facts are included, providing valid URLs for sources adds credibility and allows users to verify the information.

  • How can you teach ChatGPT to write in your personal style?

    -By providing ChatGPT with examples of your writing, it can understand and save your style under a specific label, like 'LG_STYLE'. Then, when writing new content, ChatGPT can use this saved style to create articles or texts that match your personal writing style.

  • What is the self-critic feature and how does it work?

    -The self-critic feature allows ChatGPT to review and critique its own text, providing feedback on potential improvements. It analyzes the text for clarity, conciseness, and effectiveness, and offers suggestions for enhancing the content.

  • Explain the concept of self-prompting in ChatGPT.

    -Self-prompting involves asking ChatGPT to generate a set of optimal prompts for a specific task. The AI asks clarifying questions to better understand the user's needs and then creates a series of prompts that will likely yield the best responses for the desired output.

  • How can you optimize a prompt for better results?

    -You can optimize a prompt by providing specific details about the task, such as purpose, dates, locations, and any particular incentives or benefits. This helps ChatGPT understand the context and deliver a more targeted and effective response.

  • What are some ways to control the length of ChatGPT's replies?

    -Users can set a maximum word count in their custom settings or add it to individual prompts. They can also ask ChatGPT to condense an existing reply by a certain percentage to achieve a more concise version of the text.

  • How can ChatGPT's output be formatted in different ways?

    -ChatGPT can output in various formats such as plain text, tables, CSV, HTML, JSON, XML, or even as a Pandas data frame. Users can specify the desired format in their prompts to receive the information in a form that is most useful for their needs.

  • Why is it important to structure your inputs effectively when using ChatGPT?

    -Structuring inputs effectively is crucial because it follows the principle of 'garbage in, garbage out.' Precise and clear inputs help ChatGPT provide more accurate and relevant outputs, ensuring better utilization of the AI tool.

Outlines

00:00

🤖 Maximizing ChatGPT with Custom Instructions

This paragraph discusses the importance of custom instructions in enhancing the interaction with ChatGPT. It emphasizes the value of providing context about oneself and preferences for the AI's responses, such as formality, opinions, and response length. The example given illustrates how specifying needs, such as receiving Excel formulas without explanation, can lead to more efficient interactions. Additionally, it suggests setting the AI's confidence level and source URL provision for factual topics, and concludes with the benefits of these custom settings.

05:04

📝 Developing a Personal Writing Style with ChatGPT

The second paragraph focuses on teaching ChatGPT to emulate the user's personal writing style. It outlines a process where the user provides examples of their writing, labels it as 'LG_STYLE,' and then requests the AI to write content in that style. The paragraph provides a practical example of writing an article about the importance of daily coffee for productivity. It also introduces the concept of self-critic, where ChatGPT reviews and critiques its own text, and self-prompting, which involves the AI optimizing its own prompts for better output.

10:08

📊 Utilizing ChatGPT for Concise and Formatted Outputs

This paragraph explores the capabilities of ChatGPT in producing concise responses and different output formats. It begins with instructing the AI to adhere to a specific word count, offering a method to control the length of replies. The paragraph then discusses various output formats like tables, CSV, HTML, JSON, and XML, providing examples of how to request and utilize these formats effectively. The importance of clear and well-structured prompts is highlighted to ensure the best use of ChatGPT's capabilities.

Mindmap

Keywords

💡ChatGPT

ChatGPT is an AI language model that is designed to generate human-like text based on the prompts given to it. In the context of the video, it is the primary tool being discussed, with various tips and strategies provided for optimizing its use. The video emphasizes the importance of providing clear instructions and context to ChatGPT to receive more accurate and relevant responses.

💡Custom Instructions

Custom Instructions are a feature that allows users to set specific preferences or provide context to ChatGPT before engaging in a conversation. This helps the AI understand the user's background, area of expertise, and desired tone or format of the response. By setting custom instructions, users can streamline their interactions with ChatGPT and receive more tailored information.

💡Excel Formulas

Excel formulas are mathematical expressions used in Microsoft Excel to perform calculations and analyze data. In the video, the speaker discusses how they can use ChatGPT to receive Excel formulas without additional explanations, catering to their proficiency in Excel and preference for straightforward solutions.

💡Writing Style

Writing style refers to the unique way in which an individual or entity composes text, which can include elements such as tone, vocabulary, and sentence structure. The video emphasizes the ability to teach ChatGPT to mimic a user's personal writing style by providing it with examples, thereby creating content that feels authentic to the user's voice.

💡Self-Critic

In the context of the video, 'Self-Critic' refers to the process of asking ChatGPT to analyze and critique its own text, providing feedback on areas for improvement. This allows the user to refine the AI's output and achieve a higher quality of response that is more aligned with their expectations or standards.

💡Self-Prompting

Self-Prompting is a technique where ChatGPT is used to generate a series of prompts that are designed to elicit the best possible response to a particular query. By doing so, the user can optimize the quality of the AI's output by ensuring that the prompt is well-crafted and targeted to the desired information.

💡Word Count

Word Count refers to the number of words in a given piece of text. In the context of the video, the speaker discusses the importance of specifying a word count when interacting with ChatGPT to avoid lengthy replies and to ensure conciseness, which can be particularly useful when the user has a preference for brevity or space limitations.

💡Output Format

Output Format refers to the way in which information is presented or structured by ChatGPT in response to a user's request. The video mentions various output formats such as plain text, table, CSV, HTML, JSON, and XML, highlighting the versatility of ChatGPT in delivering information in formats that can be easily utilized by the user.

💡Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO)

Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO) is a principle that states the quality of the output is only as good as the quality of the input. In the context of the video, this principle is emphasized to highlight the importance of providing clear, specific, and high-quality prompts to ChatGPT in order to receive accurate and useful responses.

💡Personalization

Personalization refers to the process of tailoring a product, service, or in this case, AI-generated content to meet the specific needs or preferences of an individual. The video discusses various strategies for personalizing interactions with ChatGPT, such as setting custom instructions and teaching it to mimic a user's writing style, to enhance the relevance and usefulness of the AI's responses.

Highlights

Custom instructions can be set to inform ChatGPT about the user's identity, preferences, and desired response style.

Providing context about your profession can help tailor responses to your field of work, such as teaching, accounting, or law.

Specifying your region without exact address can provide location-relevant responses.

Customizing the tone and formality level of ChatGPT's responses can enhance the user experience.

ChatGPT can be instructed to provide only solutions without explanations, which is beneficial for users with expertise in a particular area.

The confidence level of ChatGPT's answers can be disclosed, along with providing source URLs for factual topics.

ChatGPT can be taught to mimic a user's writing style by providing examples, improving the personalization of generated content.

ChatGPT can act as a self-critic, reviewing and providing feedback on its own text for enhanced quality.

Self-prompting can be utilized to optimize the prompts given to ChatGPT, resulting in more effective outputs.

ChatGPT can generate multiple prompts for a given task, from which the user can select the most suitable one.

Word count can be specified to prevent lengthy replies, either as a custom setting or within individual prompts.

ChatGPT can reduce the length of previously generated text to make it more concise.

Output formats can be specified, such as tables, CSV, HTML, JSON, or XML, to suit various use cases.

Improving the format of outputs, such as adding borders and spacing to tables, can enhance readability and presentation.

The importance of input quality is emphasized, aligning with the principle 'garbage in, garbage out' for effective use of AI tools.

These tips are applicable not only to ChatGPT but also to other large language model AI, broadening their utility.