It's Hard to Swim in a River of Christmas ChatGPT

Last night, the eve before Christmas Eve, the carolers of Racine Wisconsin had nothing more important to do than to show up at my place on Florence Avenue. There was a knock on the door. When I opened it, five grown adults in red cloaks stood in front of me holding chimes and frozen smiles. Their bared white teeth suggesting that there would be hell to pay if I closed the door before they finished their song.

A bell chimed, and they sang in unison to herald a new coming: 

Oh how they pound,

Raising the sound,

Over hill and dale,

Telling their tale,

Gaily they ring,

While people sing,

Songs of good cheer,

ChatGPT is here!

They actually sang the word Christmas in the last verse, but my mind changed the word to the new, all powerful spiritual being that has arrived this year.

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When I retired from my career as an Insurance Claims Adjuster in 2017, I searched far and wide looking for new opportunities to make the world a better place. After failing to learn how to program, I developed a successful side gig writing 'how-to' articles about programming.

Until 2023, I published countless successful articles about programming and web development, including:

• “7 Python Toolkits to Reshape 2019” 
• “5 Reasons to Say No to NoSQL Databases in 2020” 
• “The 12 JavaScript Functions of Christmas 2021”

But, last year things changed. It was as if the Christmas Carolers of 2022 had delivered a new gift to my front door that would change my life forever. Like a neighbor saying Merry Christmas, and then after they leave, you notice their dog's poop on your front lawn.

As an online educator, and giver of hope to the underemployed, here are the gifts OpenAI gave me last year:

1. The Reply: “But, I Can Do That With…"

Recently, I published a seminal article on CSS, "7 Tricks to Beautify Your WordPress page with CSS"

My comment section quickly filled with snarky comments.

Yes, I know. You can do that with ChatGPT. That's how I wrote the lesson.

2. Hope of a Workless Future

Needless to say, as an online purveyor of $19.99 monthly-auto renewal learn-fast-get-rich-quick schemes, I promised amazing future benefits from reading my programming tips:

Look to the future! Grow your career!

But they say, when all our jobs are going to be taken over by AI, what's the point in investing ($19.99) in career growth?

Well, that's what baristas said in 1965 when the first automatic coffee machine was invented. And yet, here they are all still making the big bucks.

3. An Old Dog Can Learn New Tricks

I'm 64 years old, but that doesn't stop this old dog from learning to bark a few new vocabulary words to sound smart.

“5 Prompts to Unlock the Secret Power of ChatGPT”

(when you enroll in my limited time membership program.)

-Howard Bubski, Certified AI Prompt Engineer

I didn't receive any clicks. It turns out, a lot of other people are also selling the secrets to the powers of ChatGPT.

And of course, the ever helpful online commentators say, “but I can just ask ChatGPT for the secret prompts !” 

(Note their reverence of the software. It's the only word they properly capitalize.)

So, I asked ChatGPT. And guess what? It gave me the same information that I had spent 30 hours compiling from my online certificate course. Thank you, OpenAI!

A New Beginning

A salesman needs to sell what the customer wants to buy. 

With this new belief is ChatGPT can do anything, let's use that belief for a series of online learning courses, I said to myself.

And finally, the $19.99 monthly auto-renew subscriptions began pouring into my Stripe account!

I've begun an entire line of new courses, some course titles include:

Course #1:

"Using ChatGPT, even a Programmer can be their own Lawyer"

(when you enroll in my limited time membership program for $19.99)

-Howard Bubski, Certified AI Prompt Engineer

Course #2:

"Using ChatGPT, even a Lawyer can be their own Programmer"

(when you enroll in my limited time membership program for $19.99)

-Howard Bubski, Certified AI Prompt Engineer

…and 631 other course combinations, from baristas learning to be surgeons, to surgeons learning to be daytime yoga instructors, all using ChatGPT!

Thank you, OpenAI, and have a Merry Christmas!

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My new book “Diaries of an Insurance Claims Adjuster - Volume #1" is coming out soon from Simon & Schuster (just kidding, it's self-published.)

The story of how I began writing, “At Age 64, They Told Me to Keep Writing" is on Medium.com.

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Note: I'm posting this on behalf of Howard Bubski, who claims that some characters and events portrayed are fictitious, even though it mostly rings true to me. All photos from Unsplash and Wikimedia Commons.