Tech Roundtable Meeting 3/8/23

Partial screen shot of ChatGPT user interface.
Partial screen shot of ChatGPT user interface.

March 8, 2023 Tech Roundtable meeting on Zoom

Minutes

ChatGPT OpenAI Platform OpenAI

The meeting focused on ChatGPT with a demo of its use. The differences between ChatGPT, OpenAI and the OpenAI platform were shown.

Ken asked ChatGPT “Compose a poem about American Standard vanities” which we reviews last meeting. In the interim he modified the prompt to “Amend the poem about American Standard Vanities to appeal to a Francophile”.

Other prompts Ken tried are:

  • Suggest topics for 90 minute meeting of non-expert computer enthusiasts
  • Suggest topics for a 45 minute meeting of non-expert computer enthusiasts.
  • What if these non-expert computer enthusiasts wanted to focus on topic 1 ?
  • Recommend a speaker with contact information to talk on Zoom about AI and machine learning to computer enthusiast club

On the prompt for recommending a speaker it revealed it did not have such information in its databases: “I apologize, as an AI language model, I don’t have access to a database of speakers or their contact information. However, I can suggest a few ways to find a speaker to talk about AI and machine learning to your computer enthusiast club:”. But it did provide a very concise plan on how to go about finding speakers.

I also used ChatGPT during the last week to help understand how to use TinyMCE inside of a WordPress Plugin he is building. Lon’s prompts were:

  • What are instructions to use TinyMCE in WordPress using Javascript?
  • How it code wp-tinymce.js in WordPress plugin?
  • How can TinyMCE be opened manually from a button?

I said all the responses were very helpful. He had found nothing on the internet that “broke the ice” on the “how tos” but the ChatGPT responses were concise and made it clear to a WordPress plugin software engineer exactly what needed to be done. Additionally I pointed out the time savings of sorting through articles and group discussions on the internet to find those same answers. They require a lot of sifting to see if they are useful and then might result in a lot of trial and error coding to see they help.

Joyce Hosford joined the meeting and was invited to propose a prompt to ChatGPT. That prompt and then modifications of it that the group supplied are as follows:

  • What is the best means of transportation from Milford New Jersey To Bozeman Montana?
  • What is the time of year for the cheapest airline flights between Newark Ariport and Bozeman Montana?
  • Write a story about taking the bus from New Jersey to Montana in the Winter Time?

All responses were very informative and helpful.

ChatGPT Hiccup

During the night 3/7/23 ChatGPT had a security issue. There was apparently a way for others to see your account’s conversation history which is a list of the chats you started. So when I went into his account to review the conversations I wanted to discuss at the meeting, they were gone. Fortunately for me I used the web browser history to recover URLs to the actual conversations. But by the time of the meeting the problem was rectified.

During the time I discovered they were missing, I queried the internet and found the problem was not me but OpenAI. Links are in the chat link list. One of those discussions revealed the problem “It seems like the chat log was leaking where other people could randomly see yours. They probably switched it off for a bit. It’s probably the best option right now because nobody would want their chat mishaps out there for other people to see.”

After Hours Segment

In the After Hours segment we discussed email authentication and speculations on how ChatGPT type of AI could be in on a project.

Email Authentication

The email authentication discussion was kicked off by Bruce Arnold explaining how his emails kept getting flagged by Gmail recipients with warnings. It turned out his web provider needed to make some adjustments to his server.

Lon Hosford demoed how Gmail would show the pass fail protocols of an email of that had the warnings Gmail inserts into email when they fail passing those protocols. Then Bruce thought it would be a good subject to study this year. However instead Lon Hosford started a conversation with ChatGPT that did all the research we needed in a clear and concise report.

After the meeting, Ken Powell did try to engage ChatGPT in a mocked up short novel writing project and the very interesting results we will talk about in the next meeting.

ChatGPT as a Project Assistant

It is clear that ChatGPT can be helpful in a programming project and other projects such as writing a novel or report. So we speculated about something like ChatGPT being a team player on the project from the beginning so that responses to prompts would include the knowledge of the project.

Chat Links

These are the links placed into the Zoom chat that were relevant to the discussion.

By Lon Hosford

Internet and Mobile Development Educator and Consultant Independent software developer with practical engineering project experience for clients such as AT&T, Avis, Bristol Myers Squibb, Ortho BioTech, Chanel, Avaya, Green Birdie Video, Aztec Learning Systems and Verizon Wireless. Lon is well known for translating client needs into useful applications. An interesting aspect of Lon's consulting work was the creation of industry jobs that did not exist before. That lead to hiring and training college students who were taught dead technologies at a time academia was woefully behind on the paradigm shifts in personal computing, the internet and today the distributed device environment often called mobile. Lon has taught thousands of students internet web development, animation and programming topics over two decades both privately and academically. He developed Multimedia Associated Degree program and courses for Raritan Valley Community College in the 1990s at a time when Macromedia Authorware and Director were tools. He is the founder, developer and educator for Raritan Valley Community College Web Developer Certification program also having its roots in the 1990s at the dawn of the internet. He also was a key curriculum developer and instructor for one of the Nation's first Web Developer Certification program offered through New Jersey Institute of Technology. Lon was also a technology instructor at the University of Phoenix Online. Lon over the years has produced educational video for topics including Paradox, Cobol, Java, Jasmine, C, C++, Linux, Flash, Cocos 2d and HTML. These courses were distributed and taught in Universities internationally when global was an emerging term.