Introduction
Welcome to the second installment in the series "Mastering ChatGPT Plus", which I introduced in "Mastering ChatGPT Plus: A Beginner's Journey from Basics to Mastery!"
In the previous article - Mastering ChatGPT Plus: Part 1 - Navigating the Interface and Exploring Core Features - we created our ChatGPT Plus account, learned the basics of how to interact with ChatGPT and explored a few of its capabilities.
In this article, you'll learn about some other interesting and useful tasks that ChatGPT can help you with, including having it create a working web application for you!
Brainstorming Ideas
Have you ever wanted to start a business, but you had trouble coming up with or narrowing down the concept for the business? ChatGPT is an amazing partner here!
Below, I asked it to generate some business concepts related to starting an AI consulting business. It will often come up with ideas you may have never thought of yourself. It could lead to that much-needed "Ah-hah!" moment that's proven so elusive.
To help get you started, here's the prompt I used:
"I am planning to start an AI consulting business with a focus on educating users about AI tools. The goal is to help both individuals and organizations understand and effectively utilize AI technologies in their daily operations and decision-making processes. I need ideas for specific services, potential target markets, and unique value propositions that my business could offer. Additionally, I would like suggestions for initial marketing strategies and potential challenges I might face in this venture."
Copy and tweak it with your own target industry and see what it comes up with. Note that you can then ask to go deeper on any concept - to do market analysis, provide more details and "how to get started" ideas, etc.
Creating Software Applications
Have you ever wanted to create an application, but didn't want to learn to code? ChatGPT can write code for you - and even deliver a simple web application that you can execute.
In the below video, I asked ChatGPT to create a simple "To Do List" web application for me and make it available for me to download and execute on my PC.
Here's the prompt I gave to ChatGPT:
"Create a basic to-do list web application? Provide all code within a single HTML page. It should allow me to add tasks, display the tasks and mark tasks as 'Done'. Also, include a feature to delete tasks once they are completed. Include instructions for running the app. Provide a link to download the app."
It generated the HTML and JavaScript code for the app, then provided a link for me to download that code. Watch to the end, where I simply click on the link provided by ChatGPT and the "To Do List" application launches in a new browser window. I add a couple of tasks, mark them completed and then delete them.
So, ChatGPT can create complete code for simple web applications.
Full disclosure: although ChatGPT is capable of generating code for much more complex applications, understanding of at least one programming language - such as JavaScript, Python, Java, etc. - would be required for those applications.
Still, giving non-programmers the ability to create working applications by simply describing the desired behavior is super cool, don't you think!?
Assisting With Writing Tasks
Whether you're a professional writer or want to start writing, ChatGPT is a fantastic tool to help you out with writing, from brainstorming ideas for books, to drafting outlines and helping you research and validate your facts, to suggesting edits and on and on. It was trained using human language and is this is its main area of expertise. Expect it to perform at its pinnacle in this area!
I want to be clear that I am in no way promoting the idea of using any AI tool to completely create new works to be passed off as your own. However, we all know that authors use other tools (anyone Google for research?) to generate ideas, suggest edits, etc. Many authors also collaborate with other humans to generate ideas. I see ChatGPT as just a more powerful tool for this purpose.
In the below ChatGPT session, I provide the title for a new book and ask it to draft a table of contents. Although you're very unlikely to use such a ChatGPT answer "as is", imagine how just this simple step could get you unstuck on getting a book started. It's a great way to get the juices flowing instead of you sitting, staring at a blank screen for hours. Writer's block anyone! No more!
How Tos
This is one of my main everyday use cases for ChatGPT. This one use has saved me so many hours. Have you ever wanted to know how to do something that you think "should" be simple, only to go down the proverbial "rabbit hole" - Googling, reading through tool documentation, on and on? And, often STILL not coming up with the answer?
To demonstrate, I asked it a very simple "how to" question: "How do I use Microsoft Paint to draw a yellow rectangle around a part of an image?"
It can help with a lot more complex "how to" tasks than this.
Translating AND Understanding Human Languages
We could simply give ChatGPT any sentence or paragraph in one language and ask to provide a direct translation into another language - say, from Spanish to English. However, let's give it a bigger challenge!
The ability to translate phrases with nuanced meaning, such as slang, old adages or proverbs into the equivalent in a different language tests ChatGPT's ability to not only understand individual words, but to also understand the underlying meanings and cultural significance. If you've ever learned a foreign language, you'll know what I mean.
For instance, the English proverb "A rolling stone gathers no moss" is not really about rocks and plant life. The phrase uses imagery with metaphor to convey a lesson intended for humans.
Let's ask ChatGPT to translate this phrase to German. But, instead of just asking for a word-for-word English-to-German translation, we ask it to find the equivalent German proverb. This demonstrates ChatGPT's ability to understand the meaning behind the English phrase (and the lesson it's intended to convey) and understand the German equivalent. The last step is to then give us the word-for-word direct translation of the German proverb.
This shows how powerful ChatGPT is at language translation. If it can do that, it should have no trouble helping you with more typical direct translation tasks. Give it a whirl!
Conclusion
So far, we've been focused on getting you familiar with some of the ways you can use ChatGPT as your assistant. If you simply took some of these tasks and started to experiment in the areas most relevant to you, you'd fairly quickly change your life!
But there's a lot more to discover. Meanwhile, I have two requests of you:
Please share your thoughts and questions in the comments section below.
Experiment with some of the tasks we've reviewed in the first two articles in this series - explore, learn and get excited!
Upcoming in the Series
In the next post in this series, Mastering ChatGPT Plus: Part 3 and Final - Custom Instructions and Custom GPTs, we'll expand your knowledge by exploring more advanced tips and tricks for getting the kind of help you want from ChatGPT.
I look forward to seeing you in the next post!
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