Hey! New here, trying to replace the other site’s ai communities.
How are you using chatgpt and how?
I pay for the pro plan and use it for fitness, planning, advice, personal research. I also own a small business and often use it for marketing and business operations advice. I think the pro subscription is definitely worth it for my use cases. I never get limited and don’t really need more, but I like that I get access to slightly better models and have priority access when the servers get busy.
Basically any question you might have can be fed into ChatGPT. You just need to be aware that its output is very often wrong. I would only recommend using on topics that you’re already well versed in so that you can recognize when it’s wrong.
I don’t see the need to ever pay for it. I’m already getting everything I need out of the free model. Never had issues with prioritization. If it’s slow to respond, that’s just more time that I spend thinking about the question myself — something I would be doing regardless.
I actually never got good use out of the free version, but might just be my use cases. I had a friend who was getting great responses from it and when I asked him about it he said I have to try the pro version if I want actual good responses.
For me the real gain for answering questions is just time saving too. I could spend that time looking through 5-6 articles that are probably half wrong, or just get a well rounded answer immediately. For example, I use it for questions like “how long should I bake chicken breasts?” And since that’s a pretty well researched and not controversial topic, it answers very accurately (and I can add unique details like how “done” I want it to be or if I marinaded it)
I’ve been an enthusiast for several years and have helped develop a discord role playing chat bot. I use AI for software development, cocktail recipes, fiction, and just general brainstorming. I use it a lot and pay for plus, but I’m pretty wary about what it has to say—particularly when asking for advice or opinions.
I also use local AI from time to time but it can’t really compare with ChatGPT. And I use NovelAI which is pretty handy for co-authoring stories.
I used it just today for some resume tweaking help. It was good at pointing out things that could be improved, but not so great at actually improving it. It frequently does not follow its own advice, but that’s the nature of AI.
Nice! What’s your main reason for paying for plus? I have pro and have never hit any limits. The heaviest usage I use it for is probably writing blog posts. It’s great at giving me the first 75% of the writing/structure and the I fact check and add my own thoughts/opinions where it got kinda boring or just wrong.
As far as advice, for me it’s much more accurate than trusting an online forum post (people can be dramatic online) but yeah still worth taking it with a grain of salt anyways. In my experience it never has a harsh opinion, it normally weighs both sides of a situation pretty well and almost frustratingly won’t give me a straight answer. Which is probably a good thing since I ultimately make up my own mind haha
I paid for plus because I was exceeding the free limits going back and forth a lot. I rarely exceed the limits now. I also pay for NovelAI, so I pay about $50/mo between the two. NovelAI is not as powerful as ChatGPT in a lot of ways, but it is as completely different use case.
I’ve also lost track of what are free features and what is paid, but it’s really freaking handy to be able to send it a picture of a screen full of Linux logs and ask about various things. Voice can be fun, but it’s hard to have a long back and forth. It’s mostly when I’m curious about something while driving.
I also paid for API access for my Discord bot.
I agree that it’s better than advice from random people but I find it really prioritizes making me feel good about myself. Like a weird robo-Tony Robins. It’s hard to explain, and I can’t say the advice wasn’t helpful, and I can talk to it more freely and longer than a real therapist, but it’s like everything else—it gets things superficially right but is often not right about the things that really matter.
It’s also really quick to make excuses and justifications for me. Like it would be really easy to go through life as a narcissist and have ChatGPT help me understand why everything is everyone else’s fault. Not that it can’t give good advice, but I feel the longer we go back and forth it just always winds up taking my side on things.
It’s like being in an echo chamber of one, and it can sound like good advice because it ultimately winds up agreeing with you (that means it’s right, right?). Plus, sometimes you have to recognize that you can’t ask a question within the current conversation because everything that came before is going to bias the answer.
None of this is meant to be against ChatGPT. It’s very useful, if you take what it says with a grain of salt. The deep research, when I’ve used it, has been better than I could do on my own. And for everything it gets wrong, as long as I’m skeptical about the results and apply a healthy dose of my own thinking, it gets me to where I want to be faster than starting from scratch.
I had to write some Python code the other day and I’ve never used it before. I had some functioning code doing exactly what I needed within a couple of hours where it would’ve taken me a couple of days reading blogs and documentation on my own and I’d have struggled with just the basic syntax.
Plus the internet is so full of bullshit that I have to be just as skeptical about anything I read online as I do about ChatGPT anyway. Overall it’s a net positive. But it’s also overhyped and not as capable as a lot of folks think.
Seems like it’s mostly people who hate AI
I mostly hate AI but constantly try to find actual usecases for it past the hype.
I have made a VST audio effect plugin where I used AI as coding assistant, set up different local AI things, like fabric to get summaries from youtube videos, autogen where I have been testing AI agents, LM studio/Ollama local server etc.
I also use local AI to make instrumentals out of songs for singing practice (UVR).
These things said I’m still bit unimpressed with gen AI. Like sure as tech savvy person I find uses but don’t think any of those are particularly revolutionary as is claimed.
Why I’m on this community, like any other AI community is to follow any developments as I continue this search for actually good use cases. With many things I just don’t find AI reliable enough, or if it’s something I’m good at, I rather use my old non AI workflows.
Yeah I get it, but I’m trying to find the people who are finding value in AI.
The internet has its bad sides but we’ve found valuable uses, and I think we can do the same thing with AI :)
