In the beginning
I love ChatGPT 🙂
But I didn’t at first.
I didn’t not like it; I just wasn’t into it until about two months ago. I first heard about it from a co-worker in my first week at a new job that I started in the second week of December 2022, roughly two weeks after ChatGPT came out in November.
My partner at work is a very cool woman who lives in Florida (we both work remotely for a company based in D.C.), and she was telling me about how she generates content for one of our clients. When she said “ChatGPT”…I thought…what in the world? It sounded weird to me; at the same time, I can’t say I fully registered what she was talking about anyway. It went in one ear and out the other since people talk about cool new tools they’re using all the time. Who has the time to check all of it out? But I did look up the site and bookmark it for later exploration.
Scoping out ChatGPT
A week or so later, when I finally got around to taking a peek, I still wasn’t clear on what the thing did and didn’t spend too much time on it. I certainly didn’t know ChatGPT was becoming a thing – still thought it was some obscure site and tool that my co-worker was into.
Eventually, from headlines, articles, news stories, and social media content, I increasingly realized ChatGPT was a big deal that everyone was getting into. I finally started hearing so much about it that I began exploring more. I “played with it” more than anything but didn’t play as much as it seemed like others were. Meanwhile, the company I work for began talking about it a lot. Our CEO even mass-emails articles about it, and in meetings, we’re encouraged to use it.
Subscription: ChatGPT Plus
About two months ago, I sprung for a $22-a-month ChatGPT Plus subscription. I opted for a paid subscription because I anticipated later needing ChatGPT for work and wanted it available to me anytime, not just when demand is low enough to accommodate me. I was pleasantly surprised to see that not only do you get access even when demand is high, you get to use GPT-4, their “most capable model,” which apparently means slightly slower responses but more reasoning and conciseness. Even though I have access to it, I believe I’ve just left my account on the default setting for the regular model. It’s served my needs just fine, but it’s good to know I have GPT-4 if I want or need it.
Even with a Plus subscription, I initially used ChatGPT lightly for some content creation on my new YouTube channel–maybe four questions total on Saturday or Sunday and that’s it. Not nearly enough to warrant the $22 a month. I knew that but didn’t care and didn’t worry about it. I figured ChatGPT would figure into my life more and more in the coming months, for work and other tasks.
Jobs Outlook Amid the Rise of ChatGPT
Like everybody, I’ve been reading articles, hearing news headlines, and watching videos about how ChatGPT is changing work and our lives and how it will take over many jobs. Or how it won’t take your job but you need to learn to integrate it into how you complete tasks in your job.
One article went through ten different professions, one by one, evaluating how they would be impacted by ChatGPT. It said that lawyers would not get edged out of what they do, though it might seem like they would. The outlook would just be way better for lawyers who embrace ChatGPT to help do their work than for those who don’t or won’t.
Though I didn’t read through every profession evaluated, or every insight about ChatGPT’s effect, I figured the lawyer thing applied to other fields as well, including mine – instructional design. I’m in Learning & Development, and my role as an instructional designer is essentially to put together training & professional learning for employees, workers, or staff (whatever an organization or company calls its people.) It’s not exactly the same as an eLearning developer, although often the responsibilities overlap. (If a person isn’t both an instructional designer and an eLearning developer, they are one working closely with the other. Depends on the organization and if they have their people specialized or not.) As an instructional designer, I’m tasked with creating and organizing learning content, deciding on graphics, assessments, format, interactions, sequencing, etc. to the end of effective learning and user engagement.
Using ChatGPT for Work
In staff meetings, we’ve been told, “Use ChatGPT to help you do your job.” For the past two months, I’ve been doing just that with two story-based learning design assignments. I ask(ed) ChatGPT questions about experiments, processes, studies, guidelines, and concepts that I know little about but need for story details – topics like health science research with animal testing, HR policies & guidelines, and government property violations. I still have to cull from what ChatGPT gives me – revise and rework as needed – but it’s so helpful to be given basic content to bolster or confirm the feasibility of an approach I had in mind and be able to make it work for what I’m trying to do.
This is important because I work with subject matter experts who are supposed to either create or revise learning content. We’ve found, though, that not all SMEs are crazy about doing the work of coming up with content, or they procrastinate it. They’re much more inclined to review and modify content already given to them than to create it themselves. (This is not always the case; sometimes we are provided with plenty of content from the beginning). In cases where we’re working with a blank canvas, though: who creates it?
Enter ChatGPT. I’m not an expert enough to create it myself. ChatGPT helps me create it, though I have to confirm the veracity of information and put my own creative thinking into it, especially to write stories around the content, which is what I’ve been doing. I’d say ChatGPT is doing 30 to 40% of the work, and I’m doing 60 to 70% of it.
Will ChatGPT Replace Me?
I know we’re all supposed to be scared of ChatGPT doing our jobs and us not having work anymore. I can’t say I don’t have that fear at all, since there must be a reason for the discourse about AI taking over, much of which I’ve not had a chance to take a deep dive into. Right now I choose not to worry about it too much. Not because it’s nothing to worry about, but because there is only so much energy I can expend worrying. My work is made easier by ChatGPT, but I still spend full days working the material into a desired final product, which makes me think (perhaps naively?) that I’m necessary?
I’m also of the mind that if it will replace me, it will also replace a lot of other people in various industries. At that point, it becomes a social issue that the world needs to contend with, and there would be a wholesale societal shakeup; it wouldn’t be me and only me out of work. (Basically, I feel “safety in numbers” [I know this may be faulty thinking])
So…for now I’m happy with and enjoy ChatGPT. I’m glad I got the premium subscription because my usage of it increases with certain work assignments, and I eventually want to experiment with other ways it is useful. Need more time in the day…
English 1301: Compare/Contrast Essay 
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