The Future is Now - or is it?
We decided to take ChatGPT for a spin in conjunction with a client project that we are working on. Did it give us flawless research? Did it uncover groundbreaking source content? Did it help us with writer’s block?
Unless you have been living under a rock in the desert with no connection to the outside world, you have heard about AI technology and ChatGPT. We’ve been playing around with this technology personally and professionally. Our take? Robots aren’t taking over our world and jobs quite yet.
Our first use case was to test out the platform in conjunction with a client project. You can watch our short video to see it in action. First, we asked ChatGPT about one of the main themes we wanted to learn more about. Second, we wanted to see if our list of primary sources was up to par. Did we miss anything important? Last, secondary sources were not easy to come by for this project and we hoped for some inspiration and further reading.
As an interpretive/exhibit writer, we liked ChatGPT’s style. Sentences were short and concise and you can even give a word count limit. The overarching thematic response was acceptable but that is where the accuracies ended. While there were some good points made, the final ChatGPT product needed human editing and fact-checking. We wouldn’t trust this to just magically produce something that requires research and accuracy.
Sources were a challenge for this project. The primary source list that ChatGPT offered came up with some great ideas to explore, but it didn’t tell you where someone could find those resources. That knowledge was, again, human-powered as we combed through archives. The secondary source list was lackluster. Publications included mismatched titles and authors or even sources that were impossible to find, even with the help of a friendly research librarian. If you devilishly thought you could spice up a bibliography, think again.
For an interpretive project, ChatGPT was a good source of inspiration. That’s where we would draw the line trusting it at this point for historical research and writing.
ChatGPT and Information Integrity
CCC recently hosted a Town Hall about ChatGPT, AI, and information integrity. This global panel of information professionals looked at the pros and cons of the hot new tool. Though their takes on the future of ChatGPT were not in alignment, the sentiment that human intervention and knowledge is needed most certainly was. You can watch the webcast here.
How else can museums and nonprofits benefit from AI tools?
Get inspiration (writer’s block) - Last month we wrote about cures for writer’s block. ChatGPT is a great place to start. Try a prompt such as, “write me a blog post about why art matters,” and see what is generated.
Create an outline: Are you in the early stages of a big project? Ask ChatGPT what to do. We tried the prompt, “how do I create an exhibit for a museum,” and the outline generated was pretty spot on.
Editing content: We use Grammarly for our editing purposes, but asked ChatGPT to edit a recent blog post. The post came back with a similar tone and some rewritten sentences in a more active voice.
Market research: What to get an idea of who is visiting your museum? Ask ChatGPT to “tell me about the audience visiting” a certain place.
Source discovery: Again, we didn’t love the secondary source list offered up for our project, but that doesn’t mean that improvements won’t come. We were prompted to look into some other research avenues that were not on our original plans.
Social media posts: Need a tweet or a post? Ask ChatGPT to write you something - you can even include character counts!
Brainstorming: Just ask ChatGPT to generate a list of ideas. Want some lecture inspiration? Ideas for family programming? Ways to work better as a team? Ways to evaluate programs? We were pretty impressed with the ideas that were AI-generated.
We think there is a lot to offer with AI in the museum and nonprofit space. Like many, we’re of the opinion that this won’t be taking over our important work any time soon, but it will certainly help to enhance ideas, inspiration, and clear some time in our busy schedules.
Let us know how it goes when you try an AI generator or if you have great ideas to add to our list about ways to use this tool!