← The ChatGPT Experiment - Simplifying AI For Curious Beginners
The ChatGPT Experiment - Simplifying AI For Curious Beginners
Ep 90 - Sharing How I'm Talking To PDFs And Getting Real Answers
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Episode Summary In this solo episode of The Chat GPT Experiment, host Cary Weston dives into a personal story of how he's using ChatGPT as a digital advocate to navigate a confusing and bureaucratic process. Cary is in the early stages of trying to...
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Hey there, it's Kerry. Hey. This week I'm sharing my experiment of having a two way conversation with some complex PDF documents that I don't fully understand. I'm trying to navigate the world of building ordinances, rules and laws, and I'm using ChatGPT to do it. I'll share with you how and the one tip that I've found that helps me get verifiable and accurate answers every time I work with it. Okay? So if that sounds interesting to you, stick with me and I'll see you on the other side of the music. Hey there. Welcome to the ChatGPT experiment. This is a podcast designed to help you better understand what ChatGPT is and maybe find a nugget or two to find value in your personal or professional life. My name is Kerry Weston. I'm your host. Hey, welcome to the show. I'm glad you're here. First things first, the website for the podcast is chatgptexperiment.com and if you haven't been, there's an archive of the episodes. You'll also find some tips and downloadable guides. I've got a free guide to beginning and best conversations for using ChatGPT. I've got a downloadable guide for creating your own custom GPTs. And if you're interested in diving a little deeper, I do offer one on one training. I offer training with businesses and groups. And if you've got a workshop or a seminar that you're putting together and you want to have a ChatGPT component to it, I do that too. I've got a few of those coming up this fall. Reach out to me chatgpt experiment.com so today, the ability for me to kind of use ChatGPT and share with you is really how the podcast came to be. That's why I called it ChatGPT experiments, which is, hey, I wonder what happens if, right? And then I do these things and share them with you. So today, short episode today, but I just want to share with you one of the things that I have been doing over the past month that may trigger for you. I call it the idea treadmill, where I share something and your brain starts spinning because you can put it it's relevant to something that you might find in your own life, right? And that is dealing with technical difficulties and documents in a situation that I'm unfamiliar with. So let me give you some background first because I've never been here before. This is the first time that I've been involved in this type of situation and I'M learning things, right? So looking to build a camp, looking to build on a property. And the property happens to be in an area that's near water. And so there are different zones and different ordinances and different rules. Right now, as background, I've served as a member of the city council, I've served as mayor of the town that I live in. So I'm familiar with the discussions. I'm familiar with the municipal setup departments, planning boards, ordinances and all that stuff. I'm familiar with it from how they are working and what they're there for. But I've never been one to go through the system. Okay. So much like the murder jury episode that I shared with you, this is my first time into an experience. And so if you haven't been through, or maybe you have, if you have been through, there are navigations that you have to take. There are. There are terms and terminologies and whatnot that you have to take. Now here's the situation that adds a little bit more complexity. I'm working with a different town, not my hometown, a smaller town, a small municipality with where they have part time staffing. And this is how part time the staffing is, is the code enforcement officer. So the position inside the town that oversees the ordinances and the rules, the person that I have to talk to in order to get permits and whatnot in this particular town is only available once a week. It's a contract type basis. Okay. And so I have been involved in, as you can imagine, you have a discussion and you wait for information, then you have to wait a. And so I get, I don't know, impatient is probably the word, but I want to be prepared, right? And so some of the questions that I'm posing in terms of can I and where can I and where should I involve digging into some ordinances and some rules. Ordinances being the laws of the town that mandate what can and cannot happen. And I want to be prepared. And so I have been doing some research in terms of finding these documents. And if you've ever seen an ordinance for a municipality, they are not written for common folks to understand. They're very legal and technical. And so let's expand this conversation out to any legal or technical document. It doesn't need to be an ordinance for a municipality, but you have seen the whereases and theretofores that are in some of these documents. And sometimes you can read it and kind of get into a circular state of confusion because it's pointing to appendixes and if, therefore, shall and it's not very common language, and that's part of the issue here is because the ordinances are written in such a way and because we have a part time contract staff, getting to know all of them inside and out is not easy. Right. They're not familiar with all the words and all the languages. And so I found myself asking questions of a resource that maybe doesn't have all the answers because of the contract part time status. And so again, back to me wanting to be prepared. Right. And be my own Advocate. So ChatGPT has played a role in this and that's the experiment that I wanted to share with you, which is there are two documents in this particular situation to set it up. There is what's called a land use document. This is the outline of the zones inside a municipality. So if you're working with a town or working with a city, there are zones. So a zone might be residential where this is where the houses are and then there might be a different residential, meaning there can be a higher concentration, there can be apartments, they can be closer together, or they could be a commercial. This is where the businesses are, all that kind of stuff, Right. This is where the industrial, this is where the factories go. Well, in this case we have a zone that says if you're going to build a house, here are the rules. However, if you're going to build a house close to water, there's a different set of rules and in each document they're saying that one precedes the other. But it's not, like I said, crystal clear. And so I have taken both documents, the global, what's called land use ordinance, this is the document that oversees the bigger picture, if you will. And then because I am near water, there is also another guiding ordinance called shoreland zoning. So there's a different set of classifications and all kinds of different rules, and some of them come from the land use document and some of them are superseded by the shoreland zone ordinance. So it's really, it's confusing if you kind of read it on its level. So I've loaded both documents into ChatGPT and I've created a project, okay. And I've talked about projects here on ChatGPT experiment before. But if you haven't heard that a project is a way in which you can create a very specific task instead of rules inside ChatGPT that you can come back to time and time and again, and inside that project you can have instructions and you can have supporting documents and resources. So it has a very focused use right. Inside ChatGPT. And I did a. I did a. A podcast a couple episodes ago on projects, if you want to check it out. So I'm using that and I'm creating a project that is specifically built to help me navigate land use ordinances. And so I've told it that you are going to be my guide. Your only reason for existence is you are going to be my guide to help me navigate the building process, getting to a building permit process inside this municipality. And I've said I'm sharing with you two documents I'm sharing with you the land use ordinance and the shore land zone ordinance. And I explain that they work together, but because of where I'm at, Shoreland is the most important one, right? And so I'm giving them the background and the rules. Now, I've also communicated via email to the municipality because like I said, they're only there once a week. So I want to document what I'm saying so we can have a record, right? And so I've been feeding those emails into the, into the project as well, because I want to share what the conversations are looking like, what the answers are coming back so they can have a specific set of knowledge, right? A specific set of information. And, and in the instructions I've shared with that, that there are email conversations that I'm sharing, and I'm sharing that for context because I want you to see how the communication is going. I want you to see the answers I'm getting and how they're leading me so you can understand the situation that I'm in. So I've asked it to analyze the land use ordinance document. I've asked it to analyze the shoreland zone ordinance. And then I've told it in the instructions that I want you to be my advocate. I want you to look out for ways in which I need to be prepared, questions that might come up, things that I need to think about, specifically play the role of the code enforcement officer in this situation and prepare me for the questions, the needs, the resources, the documents, the situations that might come up so that I can A, be aware and B, be prepared. And so it's been doing that. And I will tell you that I gave you the background because I have been able to answer questions through the use of this particular project that the person that I'm working with at the municipality hasn't been able to. And it's because it's not because of incompetence and it's not because of experience. It's because this person is contracted with many towns. And as you go from town to town, some of those ordinances vary, right? And we're running into situations that are unique to the situation. So my ability to have a Digital Advocate, a ChatGPT advocate, allows me to dig in and get really specific. And so how I'm using it is I'm asking it questions and I've told it in the instructions that the only data set that I want you to use for context in this conversation are the documents that I'm giving you. And by the way, when you give me an answer, I want you to cite the section inside the specific ordinance so I can verify, okay? Because being accurate is important. Okay? And so as I have a conversation, the instructions are telling it that when it receives a question, not to make anything up, right? Not to extrapolate, not to guess, not to search the web. Let's go to these documents and come back with answers that are literally found in the documents and cite the source, the paragraph, the section, so I can A, verify it, but B, when I use it in a conversation with a real person, I will have a point of reference to point to. Okay? So it's been very helpful. It's been very helpful. And I've been able to have a two way conversation. Think of it this way. I've been able to have a two way conversation with a PDF. That's really what this is coming down to is I'm bringing a PDF to life as the data source of a conversation that I'm having with a ChatGPT project, okay? And I haven't got to the point yet of getting the building permit just because there's things that I have to do. And the reason, right, the reason I'm not there yet is because I've understood what I need to do. And I can do that in between that once a week conversation. So even if I don't have the conversation or the answers from the real person, I'm using my project to set me up. So I'll keep you posted as far as how the building project's going. But I wanted to share with you this particular situation where I'm using information as a data source, creating a project inside ChatGPT and telling it to be my advocate. But the answers have to come only from that document. Okay? And again, the important part, trust but verify. When I say when you answer a question from the document, I want you to prove it. I want you to show me exactly where that's coming from. That's giving me the power to be confident, right? To go and look and verify what the information is coming back. Because I know one of the biggest things that I get from you and others is how do I trust? How do I know it's real? So I hope that's helpful. Just sharing an experiment here that has a very specific purpose for me. But for you, there might be a situation where this is the idea treadmill again. Ah. You know, I can see how I could apply this to that situation, or I can see how that would be helpful in my daily work here. Customer service, technical details. Right. I can see this from a health. From a legal point of view. But be careful because again, the reason I'm saying if you give me an answer, I want you to cite the sources so I can go verify is because I don't want to trust something coming back to me without the ability of verifying that it's true. Okay. So setting up a project for an advocate in the situation using only the details and data that I'm giving it as the answer, that's what the experiment is now. And I wanted to share that with you in case it helps kind of trigger something that might be helpful for you. Okay. So I hope that was helpful. And again, this is all coming up because of my own curiosity and I've shared with you time and time again. I'm a very curious person, and I know you are too, just by being here. So I asked it, could you help me in this situation? And it kind of pointed me to, why don't you do this? So that's important. And I'll leave you with that. The most important thing moving forward in using chatgpt is your own curiosity. Right. You can't break it. Try things, ask it questions, get a feedback and see where it could fit into your personal or professional goals, projects, milestones, challenges that you're facing now. Yep. Okay. There you go. I hope that was helpful. ChatGPT, experiment.com is the website. Do stay curious. Okay. And we will talk soon. Bye. Bye.
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Morning, Zoe. Got donuts.
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Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage?
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Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T mobile commercial like you teach me. So, Dana.
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Oh, no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at T Mob. We'll get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.
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Wow, impressive. Let me try. T mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network.
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Nice.
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Jeffrey, you heard them.
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T Mobile is the best place to.
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Get the new iPhone 17 Pro on.
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Us with eligible traded in any condition. So what are we having for launch?
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Dude, my work here is done.
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