December 6, 2024

How To Make the Most of ChatGPT: Practical Uses for Daily Life

ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot. It’s the biggest example of artificial intelligence that we can use directly for our own day-to-day needs. While you’ve probably heard of ChatGPT by now, and maybe even tried it yourself, I’m going to take things back to basics and explain what it is, how it works and 10 smart ways you can use it in your daily life.

What is ChatGPT and how does it work?

ChatGPT is a chatbot that can answer questions, generate written text like emails or blog posts, create images, analyze images, search the web for answers and simplify complicated issues. It’s impossible to capture the full breadth of what it can do, but the best way to get a feel for it is to try it out on ChatGPT.com.

ChatGPT works using the latest artificial intelligence models called large language models, or LLMs. These have progressed in leaps and bounds over the last few years. They are “trained” or developed by getting a supercomputer to analyze enormous gigabytes of text documents—essentially, the entire internet plus every book ever written and then some. This training process is what allows ChatGPT to understand what you’re asking it to do as well as create its replies.

You can access ChatGPT in a few ways:

ChatGPT is free, and ChatGPT Plus charges a monthly fee and provides you more access to the most powerful models and latest features. ChatGPT Plus is only worth it if you use ChatGPT a lot.

What can ChatGPT do?

As a chatbot, the number one thing ChatGPT can do is respond in a conversational way to your requests, no matter how offbeat they are. Simply type your “prompt,” hit enter and ChatGPT will generate a response. If you want to know a quick fact like what year The Beatles formed, what counts as formalwear or how birds fly in formation, it can answer your question quickly and easily.

But ChatGPT can also do so much more. Because it has a conceptual understanding of language, it can reply with a poem or joke, or create a long blog post explaining an answer in detail. It can also quickly summarize a text or email thread, pull the action points out of a long Zoom call (as long as you have a transcript) or translate the text from a French website into English. If you need help solving a puzzle, it can walk you through the steps. It can search the web and combine the information it finds into one answer.

As well as text, ChatGPT can work with images. You can upload a photo of a menu with dishes you don’t know, and it can tell you what to order. Or, if you are a ChatGPT Plus subscriber, you can use it to generate AI images.

If you’re interested in computer programming, you can also use ChatGPT to help. It can write code for you, find problems in code you’ve written or guide you on how to do it yourself.

10 daily uses for ChatGPT

If ChatGPT’s features sound overwhelming, here are 10 easy and practical ways you can use ChatGPT right now. Start experimenting!

Brainstorm ideas and make suggestions when you can’t decide what to cook or what movie to watch. Just give ChatGPT a bit of information about what ingredients are in the pantry or the genres you enjoy, and it will help you out.
Plan complicated multi-step undertakings like a holiday meal, a surprise birthday party or a trip away.
Create a quick workout or recommend a training plan to achieve your long-term fitness goals.
Identify plants, animals, recipes and anything else you can think of from a description or photo.
Make your writing more professional, more amusing or more engaging—or translate it into French, Spanish or any other language.
Draft a difficult email or text message. If you know what you want to say but not how to say it, ChatGPT can solve the problem.
Solve crossword clues. (It’s only cheating if you don’t try yourself first!)
Summarize long articles, Wikipedia entries or anything else.
Help your kids with their homework, using ChatGPT to help you remember or re-learn concepts.
Explain complex problems in an easy to understand way. For example, if you want to know about AI and cybersecurity, but it’s not in your wheelhouse, ChatGPT can help out.

Is ChatGPT safe to use?

While ChatGPT can seem incredibly intelligent, it can still make mistakes. If you’re going to use it to write texts, emails or blog posts, read over them before you hit send. Similarly, while it can help you solve problems and brainstorm, don’t follow its advice if it suggests you do something that seems silly or dangerous. It shouldn’t—but use your common sense.

In terms of privacy and your data, ChatGPT is the same as lots of other web apps. Don’t share your passwords, social security number or any other personal identifying information with it. While your data is unlikely to be linked directly to you, it could be used to train new AI models.

ChatGPT doesn’t run on your smartphone or computer, it runs on the cloud. If you want to use it in your daily life, make sure you have a fast, stable internet connection in your home.

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