Getting Started with ChatGPT

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Reading Time: 6 minutes

Last updated on October 22, 2024

Introduction

Throughout this basics guide, we’ll be using ChatGPT — one of the most popular and accessible AI chatbots. It's known for its versatility, handling a wide variety of tasks, and is easy to get started with.

Tip

If you'd like a more detailed introduction to ChatGPT with visual step-by-step guidance, check out our free course, ChatGPT for Everyone. You'll learn how to write your first prompt, explore ChatGPT's use cases, and dive into the basics of prompt engineering to improve your results.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through setting up ChatGPT and show you how to use it for everything from simple queries to more advanced tasks like summarizing text and solving math problems.

Here are the main steps we'll cover:

Set up ChatGPT
Testing simple queries with ChatGPT
Best practices for prompting ChatGPT
Troubleshooting common issues
Conclusion
FAQ

1. Set up ChatGPT

Getting started with ChatGPT is simple:

Navigate to http://chat.openai.com
It should ask you to make an account. Go ahead and do so.
Log in with this account

Need help with setup? Here’s a helpful video to guide you through:

Mobile Setup

You can also download the ChatGPT app from your device’s app store (iOS/Android). The interface is similar, and you can log in with the same account.

2. Try Out Some Prompts with ChatGPT

Now that you've set up ChatGPT, let’s try a few prompts, starting with basic questions and moving to more advanced tasks like summarizing text or solving math problems.

Note

A prompt is an input or instruction provided to an AI model to generate a response. Prompts can take many forms, from simple questions to more complex instructions that specify tone, style, or structure. You can read more about prompts in our doc about prompt engineering.

2.1 Simple Query: Color of Grass

Let’s start with a very simple question. Can ChatGPT tell us the color of grass?

Prompt

What color is grass?

AI Output

Grass is green.

This is a straightforward factual query. It’s a great way to get a feel for how ChatGPT responds to simple inputs.

2.2 Summarizing an Article

Now, let's try something more practical: summarizing a paragraph. Say you’re reading an article about snowfall in Florida and want to quickly grasp the main points. You can paste the paragraph into ChatGPT and ask for a summary :

Prompt

It is very rare for snow to fall in the U.S. state of Florida, especially in the central and southern portions of the state. Except for the far northern areas of the state, most of the major cities in Florida have never recorded measurable snowfall, though trace amounts have been recorded, or flurries in the air observed a few times each century. According to the National Weather Service, in the Florida Keys and Key West, there is no known occurrence of snow flurries since the European colonization of the region more than 300 years ago. In Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach there has been only one known report of snow flurries observed in the air in more than 200 years; this occurred in January 1977. In any event, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach have not seen snow flurries before or since this 1977 event.

Summarize this paragraph in a single sentence:

Here’s the response:

AI Output

Snowfall is extremely rare in Florida, except for the far northern areas, and only one instance of snow flurries in the air has been recorded in the major cities of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach in the last 200 years.

Caution

Your result may differ slightly because ChatGPT’s responses can vary. We’ll explain why later in this guide.

2.3 Solving Math Problems

ChatGPT can also solve math problems! Let’s give it a simple arithmetic problem to see how it handles math.

Prompt

If I have 20 apples, eat three of them, and sell three more, how many do I have left?

AI Output

If you have 20 apples and you eat three of them, you will have 20 - 3 = 17 apples left.

After eating three apples (17 left), if you sell three more, you will have 17 - 3 = 14 apples left.

It’s that simple! ChatGPT can handle both basic and more advanced math problems, even walking you through solutions step-by-step for more complicated calculations.

3. Best Practices for Prompting ChatGPT

Here are some tips to help you craft effective prompts and get the most out of ChatGPT:

Be specific: The more specific your prompt, the better the response.
- For example, instead of asking "What is grass?" ask "What color is grass in most regions?"
Set constraints: If you want concise answers, specify this in your prompt.
- For example, "Summarize this article in 20 words."
Break down complex tasks: For multi-step tasks, break your prompt into smaller, manageable parts.
- For example, instead of asking ChatGPT to solve a complicated math problem outright, ask it to walk through each step.
Experiment: Feel free to ask the same question in different ways to understand how ChatGPT interprets your inputs. This will help you refine your prompts for better results.

4. Conclusion

You should now be comfortable with what a prompt is and how to do some basic prompting with ChatGPT. Remember that prompts are the core of how you interact with AI models like ChatGPT, and effective prompting can lead to more accurate and useful responses.

Keep in mind that prompt can be a verb or a noun. You can prompt a model, or you can give a model a prompt. Both mean the same thing, and the process of interacting with the model this way is called prompting. We’ll dive deeper into prompt engineering techniques in the next lesson to further refine how you interact with ChatGPT.

5. Troubleshooting Common Issues

Issue: ChatGPT’s response is too vague.

Solution: Rephrase your prompt to provide more specific instructions.

For example, instead of asking, "What is an apple?" try, "What are the nutritional benefits of an apple?"

Issue: ChatGPT misunderstood my question.

Solution: Break the task down into smaller parts or provide more context to help ChatGPT understand the question better. You can also ask follow-up questions to clarify the output.

Issue: ChatGPT is repeating information.

Solution: Try adding constraints to your prompt, such as “Do not repeat previous details,” to encourage a more focused response.

6. FAQ

What is a prompt?

A prompt is a user input given to an large language model (LLM) like ChatGPT. It describes a task or instruction to the AI, and it’s the primary way to interact with these models. A prompt can be a question, a command, or a request for information.

What kind of prompts can I use?

In this article, we used examples of a simple factual question (color of grass), summarization of a paragraph, and solving a math problem. You’ll learn more about different types of prompts as you continue your journey with ChatGPT.

Can I ask ChatGPT multiple questions in one conversation?

Yes! ChatGPT can handle multi-turn conversations and remember the context of the ongoing dialogue. This allows you to ask follow-up questions or refine your request based on its previous answers.

Valeriia Kuka

Valeriia Kuka, Head of Content at Learn Prompting, is passionate about making AI and ML accessible. Valeriia previously grew a 60K+ follower AI-focused social media account, earning reposts from Stanford NLP, Amazon Research, Hugging Face, and AI researchers. She has also worked with AI/ML newsletters and global communities with 100K+ members and authored clear and concise explainers and historical articles.

Footnotes

This paragraph is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_in_Florida ↩