Data-Driven Leadership and Careers

Why everyone should try GPT-4, even the CEO

(Besides the fact that you don’t need technical skills to do it)

One week ago, on Mar 14, OpenAI released GPT-4. I’ll admit to being one of the users who rushed to pay my $20/month to play with it by getting a ChatGPT Plus subscription and I’m impressed. Let me take this opportunity to congratulate OpenAI on a tremendous achievement in democratizing AI. Bravo!

Today, Google released Bard, giving the public access to its alternative to GPT-4, LaMDA, for free via a waitlist. Another bravo!

What I’m far less impressed with is some of the online chatter on the subject. Too many hot takes seem to be coming from people who’ve never used it themselves and have only heard about GPT-4 from their cousin’s daughter’s yoga teacher’s prize cabbage.

Prize cabbage, as seen in Madrid. No idea what I’m looking at, but I love it. Photo by the author.

I could join the fray and write all about how GPT-4 and LaMDA aren’t perfect and they still makes plenty of factual errors (though they’re less gaudy than the mistakes we’ve been poking fun at for the last few months) but here’s what I’ll say instead:

Firstly, never trust anything you haven’t tested thoroughly. Secondly…

Stop reading about GPT-4 and LaMDA and go spend that time getting your hands dirty with them.

I feel personally compelled to point you in the direction of self-improvement: right now, GPT-4 and LaMDA are the most cutting edge AI productivity tools released to the general public, so please invest some time in becoming a more AI-informed citizen — stop reading about them and go spend the time getting your hands dirty with them. (Feel free to abandon this article too, I’ll survive.)

That’s how you’ll know what they are and whether they’re useful to you. I promise you that you don’t need any special training to interact with them, all you do is you type your text in a text box, just like using a text messaging app:

• To try GPT-4, you just sign up for ChatGPT Plus and off you go. (Costs $20/month.)
• To try LaMDA, you just sign up for Bard and off you go. (Free, but there might a waitlist.)