When I search this topic online, I always find either wrong information or advertising lies. So what is actually something that LLMs can do very well, as in being actually useful and not just outputing a nonsensical word salad that sounds coherent.
Results
So basically from what I’ve read, most people use it for natural language processing problems.
Example: turn this infodump into a bullet point list, or turn this bullet point list into a coherent text, help me with rephrasing this text, word association, etc.
Other people use it for simple questions that it can answer with a database of verified sources.
Also, a few people use it as struggle duck, basically helping alleviate writers block.
Thanks guys.
Not exactly sure this is the “right way” to use them, but I use one as an autocomplete helper in my IDE. I don’t ask it to code anything, just use it as autocomplete.
Majority of the time, it works well, especially in common languages like Python.
JIRA queries, rules, automations, etc. Suggestions for how to make my rage-fueled communications sound more reasonable and professional Meeting Summaries. Not having to take notes is HUGE.
Meeting notes are the ideal use case for AI, in the sense that everyone thinks someone needs to write them but almost nobody ever goes back and actually reads them.
But when I got curious and read the AI generated ones (the ones from Zoom at least)… According to the AI I had agreed on an action that hadn’t been even discussed in the meeting and we apparently spent half of the meeting discussing weather conditions in the various locations (AI seems to have a hard time telling the difference between initial greetings or jokes and the actual discussion, but in this one it became weirdly fixated with those initial 5 minutes)
Overcoming writers block or whatever you want to call it
Like writing an obit or thank you message that doesn’t sound stupid. I just need a sentence down to work from, even though it doesn’t make it to final draft.
Or I needed to come up with activities to teach 4th graders about aerodynamics for a STEM outreach thing. None of the output from LLM was usable as it was spit out but was enough for me to kickstart real ideas
Yes, it’s like the rubberducking technique, with a rubber duck that actually responds.
Sometimes even just trying to articulate a question is a good first step for finding the solution. A LLM can help with this process.
This is a great use i use it for similar purpose it’s great brainstorming ideas. Even if it’s ideas are bullshit cause it made it up it can spark an idea in me that’s not.
Same. It’s gets me started on things, even if I use very little or even non of its actual output.
That’s about where I land. I’ve used it the other way, too, to help tighten up a good short story I’d written where my tone and tense was all over the place.
I’ve used LLMs to write automated tests for my code, too. They’re not hard to write, just super tedious.
Dax formulas
As a developer, I use LLMs as sort of a search engine, I ask things like how to use a certain function, or how to fix a build error. I try to avoid asking for code because often the generated code doesn’t work or uses made up or deprecated functions.
As a teacher, I use it to generate data for exercises, they’re especially useful for populating databases and generating text files in a certain format that need to be parsed. I tried asking for ideas for new exercises but they always suck.
Website building
Would you mind expanding on this? How do you use the LLM to aid in building websites?
Copying some HTML and CSS code into the llm and saying “change it to make it do xxxxxxx”
It has helped with some simple javascript bookmarklets
Translation and summarisation of text. Though, I do double check.Also, getting an initial draft for some mails or rephrasing mails that I want to make more formal+concise.
I use it to review my meeting notes.
- “Based on the following daily notes, what should I follow-up on in my next meeting with #SomeTeamTag?”
- “Based on the following daily notes, what has the #SomeTeamTag accomplished the past month?”
- etc.
I’m not counting on it to not miss anything, but it jogs my memory, it does often pull out things I completely forgot about, and it lets me get away with being super lazy. Whoops, 5 minutes before a meeting I forgot about? Suddenly I can follow up on things that were talked about last meeting. Or, for sprint retrospectives, give feedback that is accurate.
While this is something LLMs are decent at, I feel this is only of value if your notes are unstructured, and it presents infosec concerns.
I guess my notes are unstructured, as in they’re what I type as I’m in the meeting. I’m a “more is better” sort of note taker, so it’s definitely faster to let AI pull things out.
Infosec … I guess people will have to evaluate that for themselves. Certainly, for my use case there’s no concern.
kill time
They help me make better searches. I use ChatGPT to get a good idea of what better to search for based on my inquiry. It tells me what I am looking for, and then just use a search engine based on that.
Also, taught me some python and appscript. Currently learning and testing its capabilities in JavaScript teaching. And, yes I test out everything it gives me. It is best to output small blocks of code and lice it together. Hoping for the best and then, 3 years later finally create an app lol because that is on my end. Still working on an organization app. 80 percent accurate on following complete directions in this case.
Literally nothing because it’s fucking useless.
so brave
I ask it increasingly absurd riddles and laugh when it hallucinates and tells me something even more absurd.
I use it for helping me learn German but only for explaining things like grammatical rules, concepts, or word uses.
Do not ask it to translate or write something for you. It will make lots of grammatical mistakes. I find that it often misgenders or uses the wrong case for nouns in a sentence.
Philosophy.
Ask it to act as Socrates, pick a topic and it will help you with introspection.
This is good for examining your biases.
e.g. I want to examine the role of government employees.
e.g. when is it ok to give up on an idea?I use it to help me come up with better wording for things. A few examples:
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Writing annual goals for my team. I had an outline of what I wanted my goals to be, but wanted to get well written detail about what it looks like to meet or exceed expectations on each goal and to create some variations based on a couple of different job types.
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Brainstorming interview questions. I can use the job description and other information to come up with a starting list of questions and then challenge the LLM to describe how the question is useful. I rarely use the results as-is, but it helps me to think through my interview plan better than just using a list of generic questions.
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Converting a stream of thought bullet list into a well written communication.
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