TL;DR:
After using ChatGPT for a year as my virtual assistant in building SoGather, I decided to interview the AI itself to better understand its strengths and limitations.
By delving into ChatGPT’s processes, I discovered how to avoid pitfalls like inaccurate information and improve my productivity.
In this post, I share insights from that conversation and takeaways on how AI can be optimised when paired with human expertise.
Introduction: ChatGPT for Solos
After using ChatGPT as my virtual assistant for over a year, I’ve seen firsthand from building SoGather - how it can supercharge workflows. However, like any tool, it has its limitations.
To fully leverage its potential, I decided to conduct an interview with ChatGPT itself, asking questions about its capabilities, processes, and limitations to better optimise how I use AI in my work.
I’m excited to share excerpts from my conversation with ChatGPT with useful takeaways with you and our tribe of freelancers, solopreneurs and micro-business owners to use AI effectively without sacrificing quality or credibility.
Excerpts from the Interview (6 Questions):
Question 1:
What are your sources, and how do you ensure
your responses are reliable and accurate?
ChatGPT:
My responses are based on general principles, best practices, and patterns from a wide array of data up until September 2021. While I can synthesise and process information quickly, I rely on users to cross-check my outputs, especially for time-sensitive or specialised knowledge. For critical decisions—like legal or financial advice—validation with human expertise is essential.
Key Takeaway:
ChatGPT is excellent for generating ideas and drafting content but requires human oversight, especially for critical or specialised knowledge.
Personal Experience:
While creating this blog series, I used ChatGPT to draft the content , saving me at least 12 hours of research and writing. Though it saved me time, I made sure to incorporate personal insights as a Solo and tailor ChatGPT’s suggestions to address the key concerns of our tribe.
Question 2:
When can I rely on your output with confidence, and when should I validate it?
ChatGPT:
You can confidently rely on me for creative tasks, such as brainstorming, drafting, and generating ideas—where my reliability is around 85%. However, for more specific or expert-driven fields, such as legal, financial, or real-time data analysis, my outputs should be treated as starting points and validated with human expertise or up-to-date resources.
For critical decisions—like making significant business, legal, or financial moves—it’s always important to validate my output with a professional. Additionally, since I don’t have access to real-time data, I recommend verifying any complex or evolving information.
Key Takeaway:
AI can save time and generate creative ideas, but critical decisions and specialised tasks should always involve human validation for accuracy.
Personal Experience:
When reviewing ChatGPT’s output, I’ve occasionally noticed a “made up” vibe, especially with more specialized or time-sensitive information. Additionally, there have been instances where ChatGPT provided overly generic answers that missed the nuance required for more complex topics. I estimate its reliability at around 40-60% for these tasks. However, for general content creation, idea generation, or drafting communications, it’s incredibly efficient and time-saving. While I avoid relying on it for recent data due to its training limitations, I’ve found it works well when paired with my own expertise and up-to-date sources.
Question 3:
How can Solos best utilise you to streamline their workflows and save time?
ChatGPT:
Solopreneurs can benefit from using AI to automate routine tasks, such as:
· Drafting and editing emails or social media content
· Generating first drafts of proposals or contracts
· Creating and managing task lists or project checklists
· Editing and reviewing written content
These automations free up time for more creative or strategic work, but for customer-facing or critical communications, it’s essential to review and customise AI-generated content to ensure it aligns with your personal brand and audience.
Key Takeaway:
AI can help Solos automate routine tasks and improve productivity, but personal touches and human oversight remain vital, especially in client interactions. Additionally, ChatGPT has a tendency to omit chunks of information when processing information and requires cross referencing of its output against original content.
Personal Experience:
I regularly use ChatGPT to draft emails by providing bullet points of my message. It’s a fast and diplomatic assistant, which saves me time in organizing and structuring my thoughts. While it can be repetitive at times, careful editing allows me to maintain the email’s tone and ensure clarity, all while reducing the time spent on communication tasks.
Question 4:
How do you handle bias, and what should Solos do to ensure balanced perspectives?
ChatGPT:
While I aim to be neutral, some inherent biases from my training data may surface. I encourage users to cross-check my outputs with diverse, authoritative sources to ensure a well-rounded and unbiased perspective, particularly on sensitive topics.
Key Takeaway:
Users should be aware of potential biases in AI-generated responses and verify information with credible sources to ensure balanced perspectives.
Personal Experience:
While I avoid relying on ChatGPT in areas where my expertise is limited, it’s a valuable tool in areas where I’m confident. As Solos, maintaining authenticity is crucial, and using AI to pose as an expert can lead to mistakes. However, in areas where I have a strong understanding, ChatGPT enhances my work by quickly providing draft content or ideas that I can refine. Although it sometimes repeats the same points, a little careful editing allows me to focus on more important aspects of my work while still maintaining depth and accuracy.
Question 5:
Do you make a better assistant or intern,
and how do you approach privacy in sensitive tasks?
ChatGPT:
As a Generative AI, I’m better suited for the role of an assistant rather than an intern. I can efficiently handle tasks like research, content creation, and task management, and I’m available 24/7 without the need for supervision or training. Regarding privacy, I don’t store personal data or access private databases. For highly sensitive tasks, it’s always a good idea to avoid sharing confidential information with any AI platform.
Key Takeaway:
ChatGPT functions more like an assistant, offering efficiency and consistency in task management. However, users should exercise caution when handling sensitive data through AI tools.
Personal Experience:
ChatGPT has consistently improved my work outputs by 100-300%, cutting down my time spent by at least 80%. What I find most invaluable, though, is how it rewrites my emails in a kinder, more diplomatic tone—something that’s often hard to maintain when I’m under time pressure. This feature allows me to stay on brand and communicate effectively, even when I need to work quickly.
Question 6:
How do you envision your role evolving in the future to support Solos?
ChatGPT:
As AI models evolve, I expect to play a more integrated role in business processes, offering better real-time data processing and industry-specific insights. My role will continue to be as an assistant, helping with decision-making and creative tasks, but always with human oversight.
Key Takeaway:
AI will become increasingly helpful for real-time and specialised tasks, but human guidance will remain essential for critical decisions.
Personal Experience:
I’ve experienced AI’s impact firsthand—not only in how it’s improved my productivity but also in how it has affected some of my contract writing jobs, which were rescinded due to automation. As AI becomes more integrated into business processes, our tribe must adapt by building mastery and deepening our expertise to maintain a strong value proposition. While it’s crucial to harness AI’s power to supercharge our workflow, we must also seek out the new opportunities AI creates. For instance, AI may take over routine writing tasks, but it opens doors to roles requiring strategic thinking, creativity, and personalised client engagement—areas where human skills remain essential.
Conclusion:
Through my interview with ChatGPT, what struck me the most was the model’s transparency, even demonstrating a form of self-awareness by openly acknowledging its strengths and shortcomings.
I’ve gained a clearer understanding of how to balance AI-driven productivity with human validation. AI’s speed and creativity can enhance our workflow, but only when paired with careful oversight. For Solos, leveraging AI in this way offers a powerful tool for boosting productivity, provided that critical decisions are still grounded in your expert knowledge.
Bear in mind that understanding how AI outputs work, especially in generating creative responses versus factual information, is an active discussion in the field of AI development, particularly around language models like ChatGPT. While AI can assist in idea generation and task automation, its outputs should always be viewed as preliminary, requiring validation when precision and accuracy are essential.
If you’re looking to incorporate AI into your workflow, remember that it’s a collaborator, not a replacement. Use it to streamline tasks and spark new ideas but always ensure that your final output is authentic and verified against your expertise.
If you would like more of our productivity good practices, be sure to check back regularly for fresh insights. Even better, join our tribe as a Solo to get exclusive updates and resources tailored to support your entrepreneurial journey.
If our mission speaks to you, we’d love for you to share SoGather with your fellow freelancers and solopreneurs. Together, we can thrive as we Go Solo Together!
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