There is definitely been lots of golly-wow, gee-whiz press about generative synthetic intelligence (AI) over the previous yr or so. I am actually 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 the moment, I will stroll you thru a fast mission the place ChatGPT saved me a number of hours of grunt work. When you’re unlikely to want to do the identical mission, I will share my pondering for the prompts, which can encourage you to make use of ChatGPT as a workhorse software for a few of your tasks.

That is simply the type of mission I might have assigned to a human assistant, again after I had human assistants. I am telling you this reality 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 will publish what I wish to name a “stunt article.” Stunt articles are tasks I provide you with which can be enjoyable and that I do know readers can be all in favour of. The article I am engaged on is a rundown of how a lot laptop gear I can purchase from Temu for underneath $100 whole. I got here in at $99.77.

Placing this text collectively concerned wanting on the Temu web site for objects to highlight. For instance, I discovered an iPad keyboard and mouse that price about $6.

To remain underneath my $100 funds, I needed so as to add all of the Temu hyperlinks to a spreadsheet, discover every value, after which transfer issues round till I received the precise whole funds I needed to spend.

The problem was changing the Temu hyperlinks into one thing helpful. That is the place ChatGPT got here in.

Part 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 may see, I’ve began deciding on the blocks. As soon as you choose all of the blocks, you may copy them. I simply pasted the complete set right into a textual content editor, which appeared like this:

The web page appears to be like ugly, however the result’s helpful.

Part 2: Figuring out the information

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 information components within the block:

There are three key components. The gold textual content reveals the title of the product, surrounded by braces. The inexperienced textual content is the bottom URL of the product, surrounded by parenthesis. There is a query mark that separates the principle web page URL from all of the random monitoring information handed to the Temu web page. I simply needed the principle URL. The purple sections spotlight the delimiters — that is the information we’ll feed into ChatGPT.

Part 3: Instructing ChatGPT to acknowledge the information

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 subsequent step is the place the meat of the mission occurred. I needed ChatGPT to tug out the titles and the hyperlinks, and go away the remaining behind. Here is that immediate:

The information above consists of a collection of blocks of knowledge. 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 internet URL). For every block, extract that URL, however get rid of every little thing following the query mark, and in addition get rid of the query mark. Most URLs will then finish in .html. We are going to 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 information, so I may seek advice from it later. The method additionally allowed me to check whether or not ChatGPT understood the project.

ChatGPT did the project accurately however stopped about two-thirds by when its buffer ran out. I informed the bot to proceed and received the remainder of the information.

Doing this course of by hand would have concerned numerous annoying reducing and pasting. ChatGPT did the work in lower than a minute.

Part 4: Cleansing up Temu’s overly advanced titles

For my mission, Temu’s titles are simply an excessive amount of. As a substitute of:

10 Inch LCD Writing Pill, Electronis Memo With Leather-based Protecting Case, Digital Drawing Board For Digital Handwriting Pad Doodle Board, Presents For

I needed one thing extra like:

LCD writing pill with case

I gave this project to ChatGPT as nicely. I reminded the software that it had beforehand parsed and recognized the information. I discover that reminding ChatGPT a few earlier step helps it extra reliably incorporate that step into subsequent steps. Then I informed it to present 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 checklist.

I received again a listing like this, however for all 26 objects:

• LCD writing pill with case
• 360-degree rotating pill stand
• 1080p video seize system
• USB 3.0 HDMI seize card
• Superior sound card for professionals
• USB 3.0 enlargement card

Part 5: Create a listing with hyperlinks

My objective was to repeat and paste this checklist of clickable hyperlinks into Excel so I may use column math to mess around with the objects I deliberate to order, including and eradicating objects till I received to my $100 funds. I needed the names clickable within the spreadsheet as a result of it could be a lot simpler to handle and leap backwards and forwards between Temu and my mission spreadsheet.

So, my ultimate ChatGPT activity was to show the checklist above right into a set of clickable hyperlinks. Once more, I began by reminding the software of the work it had accomplished. Then I informed it to create a listing with hyperlinks:

Do you see the bulleted checklist you simply created? That may be a checklist of summarized titles.

Okay, make the identical checklist once more, however flip every summarized title right into a dwell net hyperlink with its corresponding URL.

And that was that. I received 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.

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 received the funds I used to be aiming for:

The advantage of ChatGPT as a software

This was a mission I may have performed myself. However it could have required a ton of reducing and pasting, and an affordable quantity of additional thought to summarize all of the product titles. It will have taken me two or three hours of grunt work and doubtless added to my wrist ache.

However by pondering this work by as an project that might be delegated, the 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 reducing, pasting, and summarizing.

This type of mission is not fancy and it is not horny. But it surely saved me a number of hours of labor I might have discovered tedious and unsightly. Subsequent time you might have a data-parsing mission, think about using ChatGPT.

Oh, and keep tuned. As quickly as Temu sends me their haul, I will publish the detailed article about how a lot tech gear you may get for underneath $100. It will be enjoyable. See you there.

You’ll be able to observe my day-to-day mission updates on social media. You’ll want to subscribe to my weekly replace publication, and observe me on Twitter/X at @DavidGewirtz, on Fb at Fb.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.