There is definitely been a number of golly-wow, gee-whiz press about generative synthetic intelligence (AI) over the previous yr or so. I am definitely responsible of manufacturing a few of it myself. However instruments like ChatGPT are additionally simply that: instruments. They can be utilized to assist out with tasks identical to different productiveness software program.
At this time, I am going to stroll you thru a fast mission the place ChatGPT saved me a number of hours of grunt work. When you’re unlikely to wish to do the identical mission, I am going to share my pondering for the prompts, which ought to enable you to change into impressed to make use of ChatGPT as a workhorse software for a few of your tasks.
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That is simply the kind of mission I might have assigned to a human assistant, again after I had human assistants. I am telling you this truth as a result of I structured the assignments for ChatGPT equally to how I might have for somebody working for me, again after I was sitting in a cubicle as a managerial cog of a large company.
The mission
In a month or so, I am going to submit what I wish to name a “stunt article”. Stunt articles are tasks I give you which might be enjoyable and that I do know readers shall be fascinated with. The article I am engaged on is a rundown of how a lot pc gear I can purchase from Temu for below $100 whole. I got here in at $99.77. Keep tuned, the article shall be enjoyable.
Placing this text collectively concerned spending time on the Temu website, digging round, and on the lookout for objects to highlight. For instance, I discovered an iPad keyboard and mouse that price about six bucks.
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To remain below my $100 price range, I needed to deliver all of the Temu hyperlinks right into a spreadsheet, discover every value, after which transfer issues round till I obtained the precise whole price range I needed to spend.
The problem was changing the Temu hyperlinks into one thing helpful. That is the place I used ChatGPT.
Section 1: Gathering the hyperlinks
The very first thing I did was collect all my hyperlinks. For every product, I copied the hyperlink from Temu and pasted it right into a Notion web page. When pasting a URL, Notion provides you the choice to create bookmark blocks that not solely include hyperlinks but in addition include, crucially, product names. Here is a snapshot of that web page:
As you possibly can see, I’ve began deciding on the blocks. As soon as you choose all of the blocks, you possibly can copy them. I simply pasted your complete set right into a textual content editor usually set to darkish mode. When pasted right into a textual content editor, the blocks appear like this:
The web page seems ugly, however the result’s helpful.
Section 2: Figuring out the info
Let’s check out one of many information blocks. I switched my editor out of darkish mode so it is simpler so that you can see the info parts within the block:
There are three key parts. The gold textual content reveals the title of the product and it is surrounded by braces. The inexperienced textual content is the bottom URL of the product and it is surrounded by parenthesis. There is a query mark that separates the primary web page URL from all of the random monitoring information handed to the Temu web page. I simply needed the primary URL. The purple sections spotlight the delimiters and it is this information we will feed into ChatGPT.
Section 3: Instructing ChatGPT to acknowledge the info
I first fed ChatGPT this immediate:
Settle for the next information and await additional directions.
Then I copied all the data from the textual content editor and pasted it into ChatGPT. At this level, ChatGPT knew to attend for extra particulars.
The following step is the place the meat of the mission came about. I needed ChatGPT to drag out the titles and the hyperlinks, and depart the remainder behind. Here is that immediate:
The info above consists of a collection of blocks of information. In the beginning of every block is a piece inside [] brackets. For every block, designate this as TITLE.
Following the [] brackets is an open paren (adopted by an online URL). For every block, extract that URL, however get rid of every thing following the query mark, and in addition get rid of the query mark. Most URLs will then finish in .html. We’ll designate this as URL.
For every block, show the TITLE adopted by a carriage return, adopted by the URL, adopted by two newlines.
This course of achieved two issues. It allowed me to call the info, so I might discuss with it later. The method additionally allowed me to check whether or not ChatGPT understood the task.
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ChatGPT did the task accurately however stopped about two-thirds by when its buffer ran out. I informed the bot to proceed and obtained the remainder of the info.
Doing this course of by hand would have been a deeply annoying course of and many cut-and-paste actions. ChatGPT did the work in only a few moments.
Section 4: Cleansing up Temu’s overly advanced titles
For my mission, Temu’s titles are simply an excessive amount of. As an alternative of:
10 Inch LCD Writing Pill, Electronis Memo With Leather-based Protecting Case, Digital Drawing Board For Digital Handwriting Pad Doodle Board, Items For
I needed one thing extra like:
LCD writing pill with case
I gave this task to ChatGPT as properly. I reminded the software that it had beforehand parsed and recognized information. I discover that reminding ChatGPT a couple of earlier step helps it extra reliably incorporate that step into subsequent steps. Then I informed it to provide me titles. Here is that immediate:
You simply created a listing with TITLE and URL. Do you keep in mind? For the above objects, please summarize the TITLE objects in 4-6 phrases every. Solely capitalize correct phrases and the primary phrase. Give it again to me in a bullet listing.
I obtained again a listing like this, however for all 26 objects:
- LCD writing pill with case
- 360-degree rotating pill stand
- 1080p video seize machine
- USB 3.0 HDMI seize card
- Superior sound card for professionals
- USB 3.0 growth card
Section 5: Create a listing with hyperlinks
My aim was to take this listing, with clickable hyperlinks, and paste it into Excel, so I might use column math to mess around with the objects I deliberate to order, including and eradicating objects till I obtained to my $100 price range. I needed the names clickable within the spreadsheet as a result of it could be a lot simpler to handle and bounce backwards and forwards between Temu and my mission spreadsheet.
So, my ultimate ChatGPT activity was to show the listing above right into a set of clickable hyperlinks. Once more, I began by reminding the software of the work it accomplished. Then I informed it to create a listing with hyperlinks:
Do you see the bulleted listing you simply created? That may be a listing of summarized titles.
Okay, make the identical listing once more, however flip every summarized title right into a dwell net hyperlink with its corresponding URL.
And that was that. I obtained all of the hyperlinks I wanted and ChatGPT did all of the grunt work. I pasted the outcomes into my spreadsheet, selected the merchandise, and positioned the order.
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That is the ultimate spreadsheet. There have been extra merchandise after I began the method, however I added and eliminated them from the REMAINING column till I obtained the price range I used to be aiming for:
The advantage of ChatGPT as a software
This was a mission I might have accomplished myself. However it could have required a ton of chopping and pasting, and an inexpensive quantity of additional thought to summarize all of the product titles. It could have taken me two or three hours of grunt work and possibly added to my wrist ache.
However by pondering this work by as an task that could possibly be delegated, your complete ChatGPT expertise took me lower than 10 minutes. It in all probability took me much less time to make use of ChatGPT to do all that grunt work and write this text than it could have taken me to do all that chopping, pasting, and summarizing.
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This kind of mission is not fancy and it is not horny. But it surely’s helpful, saving me a number of hours of labor I might have discovered tedious and ugly. Subsequent time you’ve gotten a data-parsing mission, think about using ChatGPT.
Oh, and keep tuned. As quickly as Temu sends me their haul, I am going to submit the detailed article about how a lot tech gear you will get for below $100. It’s going to be enjoyable. See you there.
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