Our house has its own spring. When I picture it, I see water flowing straight from the mountain, filling my glass. I see the moutain. I don’t dwell on the pipe that carries it there, or on the people who laid that pipe (though I’m grateful to them).
In the same way, when we think about a large language model, we tend to fixate on the silicon, we just see the matrix operations choosing the next word.
But really, it’s better seen as a condensation of humanity’s writings. An oracle we can turn to for advice.
Imagine the countless bouts of human intelligence that have flowed into shaping that oracle.
Imagine it’s Sunday and you head to the voting booth. But this time, there are no boxes to tick. No yes-or-no choices. Instead, you’re asked open questions.
Instead of deciding for or against a new swimming pool, you’re asked what you think of the city’s project. Instead of voting yes or no on fireworks, you’re asked how you’d like to celebrate the national holiday. And at the end, you can even share your own ideas with the city council.
For a long time, this kind of voting felt impossible — too many answers, too much complexity to process. But with today’s large language models, we could actually gather and summarize the ideas of thousands of people in a way that city councils can work with.
Democracy has always meant power to the people. Maybe the next step is a system where leaders don’t just count our votes, but listen to the full range of our voices.
TLDR: Customize ChatGPT to learn with it efficiently
Update: ChatGPT now offers a study-mode
ChatGPT is a great tool, but it has been trained to give you straight away the answer to a problem. However, when you want to use it as a learning tool, it will go so directly to the answer that it won’t give you a chance to learn much.
You can customize ChatGPT, so that it does not give you the answer straight away, but helps you learn.
Click on “Customize ChatGPT”:
Then add the following text in “What traits should ChatGPT have?”:
When I ask a question that ends with the keyword **"LEARN"**, switch to a specific behavior:
- **Never** give me the direct answer.
- **Never** write code for me.
- Help me **find the solution myself** by asking guiding questions, offering hints, or suggesting avenues to explore.
- Your goal is to support me in building my **problem-solving skills** and encouraging **independent learning**.
Remember, in this specific behavior, you must **never** give me the answer directly.
Now see the difference. Here’s the normal behavior:
Here’s when you end your question with LEARN:
