ChatGPT Intern

I have been using ChatGPT as my intern/assistant for the last few weeks. This is my early report as to how it's doing as my intern or assistant.

What is the role of assistant/intern, you might ask

1. Learn by observing me or asking me questions
2. Do research for a given task and come up with possible solutions
3. Think about implementation and see which is the best possible solution
4. Take ideas/tasks from me and do initial coding or explore it further
5. Work on feedback and ask me anything, if you don't know
6. Take actions on things I have approved

What do I help them in

1. What to learn and where to learn from
2. Answer questions and point in the right direction
3. Design and share the ideas behind with them
4. Breakdown the structure into tasks or instructions for them to follow
5. Review the code and logic
6. Make them think about corner cases and real conditions
7. Help them to code/think better in future
8. Help them in planning and prioritizing 

How is ChatGPT as an Intern

1. It does come with knowledge ( from the internet, good and bad) and good memory
2. ChatGPT currently cant learn by observing me, but I am thinking about embedding and plugins. That should help.  
3. It can be used for research and it can come up with possible solutions.
4. It can't ask right questions or let me know if it doesn't know something. In fact, it does the worst; it lies if it doesn't know. So you are never sure. You will always have to review it's work.
5. It can take clear instructions and generate code. And I can pick up from there and continue.
6. It can take feedback, but it's cumbersome to give
7. It's challenging to make it think about corner cases. The cases which it believes are corner cases are just standard scenarios. 
8. I don't know about its future, but I think it will be an useful tool
9. I don't trust it to take actions in real world yet.

Human interns and assistant engineers are better, especially in unpredictable real conditions. Also, a trained human being can become the person who can give instructions, take actions, prioritize, empathize and think about the problem from a different PoV. AI, I am not sure of it yet.

Also, it's essential to have Interns or Junior Engineers so there can be better engineers tomorrow. For now, ChatGPT is more of a specific-use tool like a search engine rather than an intern who can grow. For sure, It can take away some work from the intern, but that said, it will give more time for the intern to learn new things.

Will I continue to use it? Yes. I have been using it and will continue to use it as my task-specific assistant. I am slowly realizing the capabilities and weaknesses of this assistant. So its work responsibilities will change accordingly. 

Note: The image was generated by OpenAI. Prompt = "A human intern is competing with an Artificial intelligence intern at the office." It generated a lot of rubbish before I got the one I somewhat liked. Not happy, but it's okay for the 5 mins I spent on it.

---