[듣고쓰기] 빨간모자쌤 - CHATGPT & Bionic Reading

I was on Twitter last night and I came across this Tweet. I am sure you are wondering what is wrong with the text, why does it look like that. That is what I thought first and I started reading through the thread and it turns out this is something called as ‘bionic reading’. And this is an example of something that people can do to help themselves read. Not only help them read, but help them maintain focus as they are reading. I thought that this is kind of interesting because I was looking at this and I thought, I don’t know, maybe it’s because they said that’s what is supposed to do, but I also felt like I was able to do focus on it. It just may be for much more fun to read.

So I wanted to look into a little more and see if it is really the way that actually utilize the future and I thought this would be an interesting opportunity to use ChatGPT. So I logged on and I asked ChatGPT this question “what is bionic reading?”.
And as I expected, chatGPT gave me a pretty good explanation of what bionic reading is.

Now, the explanation is a little long, so I just highlighted the sessions that I thought is the most important.

‘Bionic reading is a reading method, it’s a reading method. It combines traditional reading with digital reading technics, why? to improve comprehension and
retention of infomation and bionic reading involves using variety of digital reading tools, and one of those tools I am assuming is what we saw earlier by making some of the letters bold, and moving on, by using these tools, readers can quickly locate key information. The goal of bionic reading is to help readers become more efficient.

Now, at this point, I just wanted to make sure that making a certain letters or words bold, it was in fact, commonly known method for bionic reading. So, I had to ask, “could you give me an example?”. To which, ChatGPT gave me this response. Now, this, as you can see, this is not kind of examples I was looking forward. but it give me a slightly better idea of what bionic reading is. Now, this, like I said, it’s not the kind of example what I was looking forward. But what this is doing is giving me a short list of some common practices that people use to help themselves read through more efficiently, read through a long reading materials such as, as you can see here, a long academic paper for a class. You know, like the introduction and going to the conclusion and reading the conclusion first, just give yourself how much broader of view of where the author is trying to take you. as you go through the book or reading material.

But anyway, this is not what I wanted. I needed to be more specific. ‘cause I was mainly hooked on those bold letters. so I asked, “Does the technique include bolding the first few letters of each word?”. this is what I asked. and then it got this response.
‘Yes! that’s one common feature of bionic reading. By bolding or otherwise emphasizing the first few letters of each word, readers can more quickly and easily recognize the word and move on to the next one. This technique can be especially useful for individuals with dyslexia or other reading difficulties.’ So, that’s exactly what I wanted to hear.

Now, I am sure you can imagine what my next question was. “could you show me an example of this?”. I got a response.

‘Sure, here is an example of a text using bionic reading method. First of all, it gave me the entire text. Before it applied the bionic reading method, and then here is an example of the same text with the first few letters of each word bolded. Now, look at this here. ‘With the first few letters of each word bolded, I thought that was pretty good instruction, but, look how it did. look at that. it actually looks like ChatGPT had some trouble completing certain words. I don’t know why that is. Because this didn’t happen any of the exchanges that I had with chatGPT This was one time thing. It just happened in this session here. As I was watching this text show up on my screen, it came up awfully slow, much slower than the other text for some reasons. It could be that there was some sort of networking interference as this was happening, but like I said, it only happened this one time, so, but you know, I couldn’t be sure about that. Anyway but even with the bolded letters, it didn’t really do a very good job.

But instead of just being disappointed, and just clicking away, which is I actually almost did, I suddenly remembered something. During one of my previous exchanges with ChatGPT I remember it telling me that it had a very advanced learning system built in to it and that the more time it spends with the users, the better it gets in terms of functionality and performings. So I thought maybe I can help it learn how to do this better. So this is what I said. “Dude, you need to practice bolding. I don’t think you are doing it right. I think the way it should work is by bolding the first few letters of each word. please try again.” What do you think happened?

This was the response.
‘I apologize for the confusion earlier. Here’s an example of the bionic reading technique with the first few letters of each word bolded.’ Okay, this time, I didn’t see any words that words incompleted But, still, you can see the bolding wasn’t really done with, in fact, it seems like opposite of what I was asking for. I thought that I needed to be a littele more specific. Maybe I needed to explain to it what is was doing wrong and how I wanted to be done.

So I said, “Most of the bolding you have done are on the last of few letters of each word. Try reversing that method so that the first few letters of each word are bolded.” Let’s see what happened after that.
‘I apologize for the confusion eariler. Here’s an example of the bionic reading technique with the first… ‘, okay, now look at it. Now look at that. It actually did better. I was quite impressed by this. it actually did better based on my feedback.

And so, at this point, I felt that ChatGPT deserves some positive reinforcement, and so I say that’s much better. To which, ChatGPT replied, ‘Glad to hear that! Is there anything else I can assist you with?’ I wasn’t quite ready to end it there. So I decided to take it a little futher.

I wanted to see if I can improve. that’s what I tried to do. so that it’s not but the first few letters. what it did.
‘Sure, here’s an example of reading with the first few letters of each word bolded. Example of bionic reading.’ Pretty good, pretty good, but actually it started to fumble. This time, I decided to a lot clear taking one example of one word. So I took this letter. You see, ‘letters’ here. I took this word as an example, and then I gave it this instruction.

“Remember how I said that it should be the first letters of each word? and yet, some of the words are bolded on seemingly random letters. Take for example the word, ‘letters’. You have bolded ‘e’, ‘t’, and ‘s’. The bolding  should be done on the first 3 letters ‘l’, ‘e’, ‘t’. “

‘I apologize for the eariler confusion.’ I highlighted this session, okay? ‘You are correct that in bionic technique, it is the first few letters of each word, not just one letter. I misunderstood your intitial request and bolded only the first letter of each word.’ This part, I was really really shocked to read. Because it actually, unlike the previous responses, it actually was acknowledging what error that it had made. This actually kind of made me creeps, it was ugly human.
And then I goes on ‘Here’s an example of the correct bolding technique for the word “letters”: letters.’ So it actually did as what I asked. And then it said, ‘Thank you for brining it to my attention allowing me correct my mistake.’

So it does seem learn from sort of interactions with the users. Let’s see what I asked. I wasn’t ready to quit. “Great. now, try apply the same principle on the entire passage you used earlier.” Let’s see what happened.

‘Sure, here is the passage with the few first letters of each word bolded.’ umm, not such a good job. I think this was such of my mistake, because imagine if I had said “Now try applying the same principle on every single word throughout the entire passage that you used earlier.” Imagine that I added that extra information. “Now try applying the same principle on every word throughout the entire passage that you used.” Then, I am pretty sure that ChatGPT, I didn’t actually do that, but I am sure it would’ve done a pretty much better job.

Anyway, here’s the next what I asked. “How do you think that went?” I wanted to ask to ChatGPT, if it was able to actually look back what it did, and make assessments on it. And so, this is what it said. ‘Based on the output I provided, I believe I was able to bold the first few letters of each word in the passage provided. However, please note the effectiveness of bionic reading technique may very depending on individual preferences and reading habits.’ Okay, anyway, this was very interesting exchange, experience for me with ChatGPT that I had just last night. Actually not even last night. I was up until 3 or 4 this morning having this exchange with ChatGPT. It was a pretty interesting. It was quite interesting. Anyway I just wanted to share with you, this little experience that I had. I hope this was some what entertaining, maybe educational for you