Can I train ChatGPT?
August 15, 2023 12:44 PM Subscribe
When I query ChatGPT I often want it to use a particular reference book in its answer. Sometimes it will use it and sometimes I'll get a standard disclaimer saying that it can't use it. Can I set Chat to use the desired reference book?
Best answer: Without plugins, ChatGPT does not have access to the internet or any particular book. ChatGPT's training materials may have even included the book you are thinking of, but that doesn't mean that it now has access to the full text of that book to refer back to, any more than us humans having watched a movie when we were a kid means we can mentally return to any particular scene or cut from the movie at will. It means that it tried to reproduce text from that book and was tweaked to get a little better at doing that.
If the book is something that others have discussed a fair amount on the internet, its answers involving the book may be intuitively convincing, but it won't be able to actually give reliable citations to specific passages in the book.
To get ChatGPT to give reliable citations to a reference book, you'll want to enable Plugins, which as far as I know require a Plus account. You can also then set custom instructions. Since you don't want to use the reference book literally 100% of the time, word your custom instructions conditionally, like "If I say UseReference in my question, I mean for your answer to refer to the blah edition of blah".
Once you've enabled Plugins, your next step depends on how you can supply that book's material to ChatGPT. If you have the book in PDF format, there are many plugins in the ChatGPT plugin store that allow you to upload a PDF for ChatGPT to refer to. If the book is available somewhere online, you'll want a "link reader" style plugin that you can give the url for the book to. You can then modify your custom instructions to say something like "refer to such-and-such book by giving the Access Link plugin this url: [put url here]".
Then when you start a new chat, make sure you've selected GPT4, use the plugin selection dropdown to ensure that you've enabled the plugin you need to give ChatGPT the text of the book, and ask your question including the word "UseReference".
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 1:37 PM on August 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
If the book is something that others have discussed a fair amount on the internet, its answers involving the book may be intuitively convincing, but it won't be able to actually give reliable citations to specific passages in the book.
To get ChatGPT to give reliable citations to a reference book, you'll want to enable Plugins, which as far as I know require a Plus account. You can also then set custom instructions. Since you don't want to use the reference book literally 100% of the time, word your custom instructions conditionally, like "If I say UseReference in my question, I mean for your answer to refer to the blah edition of blah".
Once you've enabled Plugins, your next step depends on how you can supply that book's material to ChatGPT. If you have the book in PDF format, there are many plugins in the ChatGPT plugin store that allow you to upload a PDF for ChatGPT to refer to. If the book is available somewhere online, you'll want a "link reader" style plugin that you can give the url for the book to. You can then modify your custom instructions to say something like "refer to such-and-such book by giving the Access Link plugin this url: [put url here]".
Then when you start a new chat, make sure you've selected GPT4, use the plugin selection dropdown to ensure that you've enabled the plugin you need to give ChatGPT the text of the book, and ask your question including the word "UseReference".
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 1:37 PM on August 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
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posted by lookoutbelow at 1:08 PM on August 15, 2023