This is a follow-up to my quantum computing article, which is the first post I have used OpenAI’s ChatGPT instead of Google in my research. This one shall be a short post, mostly consisting of queries and answers with the sole purpose of guiding people on how they can utilize ChatGPT to improve their research.
Before we start, I would like to make my motives clear. Since ChatGPT launched in December, I came across several posts that are generated by ChatGPT. These are mostly clickbait so-called articles prepared with minimum effort from the author in order to exploit the fact-check gap on the internet to make easy money. I don’t find this behaviour ethical even though there is technically no rule against it.
That is absolutely not what we are going to do here. We will not copy-paste answers either. No, we will be using it to improve our research efficiency, nothing more. Let’s compare its advantages and disadvantages against Google search and then start.
- Advantage: When you do a search on Google, you usually need to manually go through a bunch of articles before you find what you seek. ChatGPT can give a bull’s eye answer to your question, which is a tremendous amount of saved time.
- Disadvantage: Unlike Google, ChatGPT does not give you the source of the information, so you cannot use it in academic articles.
Our example scenario will be concerning quantum computing. So let’s start with something as simple as “what is quantum computing”. Note: If you are asking what is quantum computing, you probably should not write about quantum computing.
Now we are against a bunch of quantum physics terms like superposition and entanglement. We are computer scientists and not familiar with quantum terminology, so we need to understand them first.
The same can be done for entanglement. Now, we learned that quantum computers use qubits instead of bits. We already know how bits work but we are not really sure how qubits are different.
We have already learned what superposition and entanglement mean so it all makes sense now. So far, all we have is a bunch of explanations but we don’t know anything about how well they perform.
Interesting... We learned that quantum computers have limited use. Let’s learn what can we do.
The best thing about ChatGPT is that it does not just throw us a bunch of lists and definitions. It can give us actual insights and comparisons. I will pick one item and focus on that one.
Now this one was impressive! Not only it extracted the answer to our exact question but also it returned the quantified results for both methods. Let’s elaborate a little bit more…
It can even give the code of the algorithm in the preferred language.
Is it always sunny in quantum computing?
Lastly, about the future of quantum computers…
Images speak louder than words. I am not going to say ChatGPT is great, all technologies have pros and cons. Nevertheless, it is a powerful tool. Use it responsibly.
