This weekend, a friend of mine showed me how he was using a custom GPT to help him develop characters for a video game. He had already established the core of these characters, but wanted to further imbue them with spiritual knowledge. (The custom GPT he used is aptly named Daemon, referring to a supernatural “guiding spirit” in Greek mythology.)
GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer.
The use of custom GPTs or tailored chatbots may be old news for some, but to me it was the first time I had a visceral experience of dynamically interacting with someone else’s knowledge.
The printing press was revolutionary because it allowed people to encode their knowledge and widely distribute it for others to engage with. However, in our modern society, books are faulty mediums for learning. They are static texts that do not adapt to our context or answer our questions directly.
ChatGPT and other large language models, on the other hand, are interactive but not specific. They are trained on a massive trove of text, not designed to facilitate learning within a specific domain.
In the past year, I have seen some chatbots trained on focused text, such as the work of Naval Ravikant or the writings of Lenny’s Newsletter (and friends). I am sure there are others. But I believe we are just scratching the surface with GPTs. Anyone who writes a book should have a complementary piece of software for readers to engage with – and I suppose in many cases, this software will replace the need for a book altogether.
Beyond chatbots, there is an emerging design space for encoding knowledge into interactive software. Lex, an AI-enabled writing processor, is developing a Prompt Builder & Library that serves as a marketplace for writers to leverage the expertise of others to inform their writing.
If the printing press – and later, the internet – unlocked “reach” for knowledge, then trained language models will unlock “engagement” for expertise.
I'm looking forward to exploring custom GPTs in the coming weeks. Please let me know if you have any favorites or recommendations!
