technology

Cheat GPT

Sam Falco

“But isn’t that cheating?” a writer friend asked when I mentioned that I’m learning to incorporate ChatGPT into my writing workflow. So we’re not friends anymore.

No, no, that’s not true. We had a fascinating discussion about it. I won’t try to reconstruct it, but I will dig into why I’ve come to embrace a tool that I, too, was skeptical about when it burst onto the scene not long ago.

And I was skeptical. Very. My initial experiments with ChatGPT produced poor results. Media portrayals of how it worked were shallow at best and often wrong. That, and what I saw people doing with it, led me to think of it as a plagiarism machine. After I explored its capabilities a little more I changed my mind. While it can be used unethically, that doesn’t change the value of the tool, and I don’t think it’s “cheating” to work with it.

CNC Routers and Woodworking

Bear with me on a digression. One of my hobbies is woodworking. That community has a lot of people who believe that using power tools isn’t “real” woodworking. It’s not butch enough if you flip a switch; you must do everything with hand tools. Of course, if you drill into that opinion (YSWIDT) you discover that they can’t back it up with much more than “because it makes it too easy.” Weird flex, my dude. (It is almost always a dude.) Do you fell your own timber, then mill it from the trunk, and so on? What does “too easy” mean?

But even people who accept power tools often balk at one in particular: the CNC router. A CNC (Computer Numerical Control) router uses computer code to cut complex shapes into and out of wood. Using a CNC router allows woodworkers to create amazing designs and shapes that would be difficult if not impossible to create by hand. An easy way to start an argument in the woodworking community is to talk smack about CNC machines, either pro or con. And the most common criticism is that using one is “cheating.”

That’s a load of crap. When you use a CNC machine, it’s only doing what you tell it to. It’s still executing on the decisions you make and the design you give it. It expands the range of what you can create. And by “you,” I mean “not me,” because I don’t have space for one in my shop. But I’d get one if I could.

ChatGPT is a Power Tool

Using ChatGPT is more complicated than using a CNC. You can’t put a slab of wood onto a CNC, turn it on, and expect something to emerge. Whereas with ChatGPT, you can certainly give it a shallow prompt and it will generate output that looks like something a human might have written. It looks like something that a particularly ignorant first-year high school student might have written, but it’s something. But ChatGPT is tool that can help you create something with greater detail and depth than you could without it, so in that way it’s similar.

Using ChatGPT looks like cheating because it seems like you’re getting something for nothing. And it’s fair to say that some people are using it that way. I don’t even have to cite any examples; you’ll probably see an article in the news *today* about how someone tried to pull a fast one with ChatGPT and it blew up in their face. Because ChatGPT is so much more robust at simulating human thought, it’s easy for people who are lazy, unethical, or both, to use it poorly.

It’s only “cheating” if you use it to cheat–such as trying to pass off its writing as your own. But that’s simple plagiarism, and it’s wrong whether you’re buying a term paper from a human writer and turning it in with your name on it or having a computer create the paper. Using ChatGPT as a sounding board, or a way to challenge your thinking, or to enhance what you would do on your own without it? None of those examples is “cheating,” unless you want to be like the weirdos who look down on people who use table saws.

Learning to use Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT will change the way you work. Word processors did, too. So did the invention of the disposable ink pen, and the fountain pen, and so on. The tool is an extension of the user. Learning to use ChatGPT doesn’t make you less of a writer; it only makes you a different kind of writer. It isn’t cheating. It’s adapting.

Are you using ChatGPT? What difficulties are you encountering with it? Leave questions in the comments, and I’ll try to answer them in future posts.

Ditching the iPad

Sam Falco

A few months ago, I downloaded an eight-ball simulator to my iPad in search of a way to relax on a Friday night. The game was fun, at first. Although it made the usual pitches for buying “gems” and “coins” for power-ups, the designers had made it possible to play without having to spend money. But they also built in all the techniques such games use to keep you playing. Over the next eight weeks, what had started as an evening’s entertainment turned into a joyless grind that I nevertheless couldn’t break away from. I even deleted the app one night, only to download it the next morning.

After a few days, I deleted the app a second time and thought about how to keep from falling prey to its distracting lure again. At least, I tried to think about it. It wasn’t very long before I distracted myself with woodworking videos on YouTube. When I got bored with those, I turned to political blogs. After catching up on them, I opened the App Store to download the game again—or find another and begin the cycle anew. The game wasn’t the only problem.

I wrote about the struggle in my journal and concluded that the iPad itself was the problem. It made it too easy for me to fritter away my time. I shut it down and put it in a drawer. That was on a Thursday night. I promised myself I wouldn’t take it out again until after the weekend. Although I was tempted to break my promise to myself mere minutes later, laziness came to the rescue. Get off the sofa and go all the way to the next room? Heck, no!

Instead, I caught up on books and magazines. I worked on my novel. I wrote in my journal more often. I did tasks I’d been putting off for my business. I had so much more time than I’d realized because it had all been vanishing into the iPad screen.

By Monday, I was reluctant to get the iPad back out of the drawer I’d shoved it into. Why risk falling back into the wasteful behavior I’d escaped? But I realized that being afraid to use it at all wasn’t necessarily healthier than indiscriminate use had been. If there were any legitimate uses for it, I’d be foolish to give them up out of fear.

Two use cases came to mind. When I teach Scrum.org Live Virtual Classes, I sketch concepts for my students. I also design woodworking projects. I don’t need it to write—I use old-fashioned pen and paper for that. I can check and send email from my phone when I can’t get to a computer. And the less time I spend reading blogs, the better it is for my blood pressure.

I deleted every app that didn’t support teaching and designing. The one exception was the Peacock app, since Carolyn and I sometimes watch Premier League games on the patio over a late weekend breakfast. Once I’d reorganized the remaining apps, I shut the iPad down again and put it away.

Three weeks after the experiment began, I’ve booted it up maybe three times. Ditching my reflexive distraction has improved my satisfaction. I read more, write more, do more. The iPad itself was never the problem—only the way I used it.