Using ChatGPT

ChatGPT has recently become popular. I tried it and personally like it a lot. I’ve now incorporated it into my daily tools.

Here I’ll mark down usage patterns.

Prerequisites

• VPN (Scientific Internet Access)

  It’s recommended to solve this first before proceeding. Testing shows Hong Kong nodes have issues during registration and login, so I recommend Japan/US and other nodes. I personally configure fixed nodes like US proxy access

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​ For those who haven’t solved VPN access yet, you can refer to my proxy solution

Supported countries list see https://platform.openai.com/docs/supported-countries

Registration

With proxy solved, follow the official registration process

• Email recommended Gmail, some emails like foxmail are blocked

• ❌ Don’t use GV numbers, pay directly to solve verification code reception. Verification code service uses https://sms-activate.org, minimum top-up 2 dollars or 150 rubles, receiving once requires at least 10 rubles

  • Currently found that some countries’ phone numbers will error, if encountering such errors, try switching countries

    We've detected suspicious behavior from phone numbers similar to yours

• To change account password, you can select forgot password during login for reset

If registration is difficult, you can check detailed registration tutorial posts, recommended tutorial

Note

The phone number filled during registration cannot be modified later, but it doesn’t affect usage.

Login

As mentioned in prerequisites, for login use non-Hong Kong nodes as recommended, otherwise login will show unsupported_country error. During login process if changing proxy still errors, suggest clearing web cache (Cookie), or directly login in incognito mode

Usage Tips

Regarding usage, here are some experiences:

• ChatGPT supports Chinese, so you can input directly. The difference between AI and regular search engines is context, so questions don’t need to be asked all at once - you can communicate just like talking to a person. If GPT answers in English but you need Chinese, you can directly stop and ask it again to “please use Chinese”
• If the answer result is obviously incomplete, you can input continue
• Each chat retains previous chat records (context), which helps with follow-up questions. It’s recommended to continue asking questions in the corresponding context chat, this way answer accuracy will be higher
• Rename each chat as an assistant, building different topic AI robots, this way answers will be more efficient. Essentially, chat context ensures communication quality
  • Tips reference https://twitter.com/hzlzh/status/1624354415984660480

Official link: https://chat.openai.com/chat

Personal Avatar Settings

Default is letters with solid color background. Personalized avatar settings can be solved through https://en.gravatar.com/. Note that the registration email should match ChatGPT.

Third-party Ecosystem Tools

Around ChatGPT, some bots/tools have already emerged, here are some recommendations. However, I personally don’t currently like using these ecosystem tools. My usage pattern is mainly directly accessing https://chat.openai.com/ for chatting

• https://github.com/wong2/chat-gpt-google-extension

  This extension also directly presents ChatGPT’s feedback results about search keywords to the search page

Current Issues Encountered

1. ChatGPT will have issues after asking and answering several times. Testing shows it’s not a current proxy issue. If it’s not a proxy issue, then it’s the instability of the corresponding service

   An error occurred. If this issue persists please contact us through our help center at help.openai.com.

   Currently when encountering this issue, the only solution is to refresh, but the downside is that the previous few rounds of Q&A context is lost, equivalent to starting a new conversation

2. Paid/Free

   Actual usage shows the service has time limitations. The next step will definitely require payment, but from the current experience benefits, if payment/pricing is appropriate, I’m still willing to pay

ChatGPT & GitHub Copilot

I’ve been using GitHub Copilot for 1 month. Currently positioned as a code manager, after all its essence is deriving code based on context. ChatGPT can be seen as an enhanced version of Google search, and because of context, answers will be more objective and accurate. Therefore they don’t conflict and are both essential products.

So currently I continue using both, hoping ChatGPT’s stability can continue improving to avoid glitchy errors.

openai API

1. Currently ChatGPT is free and can be used through GUI
2. OpenAI also provides API solutions/documentation, and provides toolkits for various language environments, such as Node.js. After creating API_KEY it can be used. API usage is currently free, but there are limitations on generated character count, exceeding requires paid purchase.
3. Regarding the relationship and applicable scenarios of these models: ChatGPT is backed by GPT model, GitHub Copilot is backed by Codex model. GPT model is mainly for natural language Q&A communication. Of course code itself is also a language, so GPT can also be used. Codex model is mainly for code generation. At the API usage level, these models are currently all supported, so using API can conveniently create chatbots or code generation tools.
4. ChatGPT Hong Kong and Macau also cannot log in normally and need proxy, but API has no such restrictions.

Final Thoughts

OpenAI is very cool, recommend trying it.