iPad Pro The rise of ChatGPT has made the iPad useless

[StellarVixen]

Some people are missing the point here, OP is not saying that ChatGPT is making iPad obsolete completely as a device and that it doesn't have any purpose anymore, they are pointing to one specific use case where he thinks iPad might be obsolete.

However, they weren't exactly elaborate about what they exactly mean.

 

[BenGoren]

I’m using my iPad mostly to take handwritten notes in graduate-level statistics classes, such as where we’re learning how to write our own machine learning algorithms. It’s great … the professor typically posts a PDF of lecture slides, and I can scribble directly on them, insert blank pages for the chalkboard transcripts, and so on. If I need to pull up something from a Web site or reference an email or check my calendar or whatever, it’s just a quick swipe away.

I can guarantee you that, as damned impressive as ChatGPT assuredly is, it is utterly useless for any sort of math more advanced than basic Calculus (and maybe not even that).

For example … I asked it to prove that the square root of two is irrational. It did well enough that it’d probably get an “A” on that question. Then, in the same chat, I asked it to prove that the square root of two is rational. It happily obliged with a convincingly-confident but seriously flawed “proof.” I then pointed out the most obvious contradiction between its first and second replies, and it stubbornly stuck to its guns that the square root of two is both rational and irrational.

I can’t wait for Siri to advance to the level of ChatGPT. And it’ll probably be sooner than any of us realize that it’ll gain graduate-level competency in various fields. But it’s still got quite a ways to go.

Right now, I’d say it’s basically a talented but overconfident ten-year-old with an encyclopedic photographic memory. Trust it accordingly.

b&

 

[sparksd]

One use case does not make the iPad useless. And I like the option of removing the keyboard to have a tablet - do that with the MacBook and then you really are stuck with something useless.

 

[GMShadow]

John C. Dvorak, is that you?

EDIT: honestly, check their post history. This user just posts "thoughts" to "generate discussion" - they aren't genuine in any of it.

 

[Jumpthesnark]

The title is so extreme and narrow that it seems like a troll post or the OP does not understand the iPad -- or humans -- at all.

NOT saying that it's a troll post -- mods don't like that -- so I will just say I don't understand the OP then.

Completely agree. The post asks a legitimate question for a limited use case in the OP's situation, but it then uses a headline that exaggerates (and maybe trolls? It's possible) their one use case, which ignores facts, to a blanket statement that the iPad is "useless." Just for clicks and rage replies?

Maybe ChatGPT can replace these ridiculous MR threads with ones that actually make the site better.

 

[Timpetus]

I thought it would take a while to beat the thread from yesterday about selling an icloud locked MBP on Swappa. Turns out, it took only a day...

 

[jwolf6589]

Just out of curiosity, I interacted with ChatGPT for it to write a sermon on Colossians 3:1-17. Because of the questions that I asked of it, the results were very, very close to what I would've done. We've come a long way since Eliza.

I'm trying to understand what the OP means by ChatGPT making the iPad useless. That's like saying my iPhone makes my Kia K5 useless.

I agree. My iPad Mini 6 I use daily and it's far far far from worthless.

 

[Starfia]

I don't get the reasoning. iPads have been sold with keyboards since the original in 2010. If Apple learned people didn't think that was worthwhile, they'd presumably have eased off on that rather than specializing and selling premium-experience keyboards like they do now. Personally, I went out of my way my to customize my own special mechanical keyboard just for my iPads.

 

[ninecows]

Completely agree. The post asks a legitimate question for a limited use case in the OP's situation, but it then uses a headline that exaggerates (and maybe trolls? It's possible) their one use case, which ignores facts, to a blanket statement that the iPad is "useless." Just for clicks and rage replies?

Maybe ChatGPT can replace these ridiculous MR threads with ones that actually make the site better.

What has the world come to when we fill fora with terabytes of data to create traffic on advertising space.

And when we build coal powered power plants so people can mine cryptocurrency.

 

[Retskrad]

Sorry, I should've been more clear in my post. I used the 2021 iPad Pro with the Pencil all the way until ChatGPT found it's way to my circle of friends. I literally couldn't keep up with some of my friends in my class. They used ChatGPT on their Macs and started to work on their drafts much quicker than me. They asked it to summarize PDF's, books, articles. Meanwhile, I sat there with my iPad Pro + Pencil, manually read dense source material like a caveman and took hand written notes, which is much slower than typing on a keyboard. It literally took me 2-3 times longer to begin my initial draft. I honestly feel like the iPad without a keyboard will be relegated to only note taking. At this point, there's no point in getting any iPad other than the base model.

 

[rhaezorblue]

Sorry, I should've been more clear in my post. I used the 2021 iPad Pro with the Pencil all the way until ChatGPT found it's way to my circle of friends. I literally couldn't keep up with some of my friends in my class. They used ChatGPT on their Macs and started to work on their drafts much quicker than me. They asked it to summarize PDF's, books, articles. Meanwhile, I sat there with my iPad Pro + Pencil, manually read dense source material like a caveman and took hand written notes, which is much slower than typing on a keyboard. It literally took me 2-3 times longer to begin my initial draft. I honestly feel like the iPad without a keyboard will be relegated to only note taking. At this point, there's no point in getting any iPad other than the base model.

Reading this whole thread has made me feel super behind the times.. and I'm a full-time techie. Like how is this even possible? Is this a dream? lol

 

[sparksd]

Sorry, I should've been more clear in my post. I used the 2021 iPad Pro with the Pencil all the way until ChatGPT found it's way to my circle of friends. I literally couldn't keep up with some of my friends in my class. They used ChatGPT on their Macs and started to work on their drafts much quicker than me. They asked it to summarize PDF's, books, articles. Meanwhile, I sat there with my iPad Pro + Pencil, manually read dense source material like a caveman and took hand written notes, which is much slower than typing on a keyboard. It literally took me 2-3 times longer to begin my initial draft. I honestly feel like the iPad without a keyboard will be relegated to only note taking. At this point, there's no point in getting any iPad other than the base model.

You are just speaking for your own usage.

 

[mkelly]

Sorry, I should've been more clear in my post. I used the 2021 iPad Pro with the Pencil all the way until ChatGPT found it's way to my circle of friends. I literally couldn't keep up with some of my friends in my class. They used ChatGPT on their Macs and started to work on their drafts much quicker than me. They asked it to summarize PDF's, books, articles. Meanwhile, I sat there with my iPad Pro + Pencil, manually read dense source material like a caveman and took hand written notes, which is much slower than typing on a keyboard. It literally took me 2-3 times longer to begin my initial draft. I honestly feel like the iPad without a keyboard will be relegated to only note taking. At this point, there's no point in getting any iPad other than the base model.

So you did the work and read the actual material, and they got "summaries" of various sources from ChatGPT, which is known to insert factually incorrect information into its output?

They might think they are being more efficient, but you're better off with your "caveman" approach in the long-run.

I can't say this enough to the edtechs, profs and students that I work with: ChatGPT is *not* a source of factual information. It can appear very impressive and seemingly authoritative, but you get no feedback or indication as to whether the information it provides is correct or not. More than likely, it is not (apparently 15-20% of the time - see below)

As a sounding board for ideas ... it's fine. But don't trust what it generates as true. And certainly don't base your work on it.

Bard’s first public mistake cost Google $100 billion

An underwhelming launch event and an error in an ad put Google's chatbot on the backfoot compared to Microsoft’s ChatGPT

qz.com

The new Microsoft Bing will sometimes misrepresent the info it finds

“[P]lease use your best judgment.”

www.theverge.com

Hallucinations, Plagiarism, and ChatGPT

ChatGPT was introduced just seven weeks ago, but the AI has already garnered a lifetime’s worth of hype. It’s anybody’s guess whether this particular

www.datanami.com

"Roughly speaking, the hallucination rate for ChatGPT is 15% to 20%", Relan says. “So 80% of the time, it does well, and 20% of the time, it makes up stuff,” he tells Datanami. “The key here is to find out when it is [hallucinating], and make sure that you have an alternative answer or a response you deliver to the user, versus its hallucination.”

 

[one more]

I guess this is all very subjective - I have been using an iPad as my main “computer” for 10 years now, but have not heard of ChatGPT until today. Different people, different workflows.

I agree, though, that typing on a laptop is much more efficient.

 

[jdb8167]

Sorry, I should've been more clear in my post. I used the 2021 iPad Pro with the Pencil all the way until ChatGPT found it's way to my circle of friends. I literally couldn't keep up with some of my friends in my class. They used ChatGPT on their Macs and started to work on their drafts much quicker than me. They asked it to summarize PDF's, books, articles. Meanwhile, I sat there with my iPad Pro + Pencil, manually read dense source material like a caveman and took hand written notes, which is much slower than typing on a keyboard. It literally took me 2-3 times longer to begin my initial draft. I honestly feel like the iPad without a keyboard will be relegated to only note taking. At this point, there's no point in getting any iPad other than the base model.

I don't understand why you didn't use the on screen keyboard. You might type a little slower than with a hardware keyboard but it is far from useless. Weird post. It seems to be deliberately obtuse.

 

[TechnoMonk]

I thought they were trying to say you can't load ML apps (like a mac can). I was going to be like, well yeah, you can't load XCode either. Now that I see they are talking about a website, then I agree with the others. I use a Magic Keyboard for those situations, otherwise it gets to be a tablet.

You can definitely load ML apps on iPad. M1 IPad with 8 GB was pretty close to a M1 MacBook Pro 16GB in text to image generation bench mark. MacBook Air smoked both of those in Image inference/generation.

GitHub - apple/ml-stable-diffusion: Stable Diffusion with Core ML on Apple Silicon

Stable Diffusion with Core ML on Apple Silicon. Contribute to apple/ml-stable-diffusion development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

There are many other apps which would run just fine on IPad. Just shows you how efficient iPad OS is compared to Mac.

 

[Jackbequickly]

My iPad is not my most used Apple device, it is most loved. I run my business, pay my bills and depend on it to give me news from multiple perspectives. If it broke today, I would be on the way to the Apple Store. I own two for the house and one stays at the office.

 

[TechnoMonk]

I have witnessed that people in my university, and a lot of people on social media, have adopted ChatGPT into their workflow. These "co-pilots" are a crucial part of working and they live permanently on the side. You are constantly sending it ideas and editing the draft. For that to happen, you need a keyboard which makes the iPad without a keyboard useless for people working in 2023. Of course, people say you can use the iPad with a keyboard but at that point, you might as well use the MacBook instead.

What are your thoughts on iPad's place in a world of AI butlers, like ChatGPT?

I have MacBook Pro 16 inch, and iPad Pro. I use iPad Pro a lot, and Mac isn’t that great in some of the tasks.
AI hasn’t even begun trickling to consumer devices or work flows. I have been living on cutting edge of AI, development, training and generation for past year. The OpenAI hasn’t launched full fledged chatGPT API yet for developers to write complete apps. iPad Pro will probably be the biggest beneficiary of AI, I already use iPad Pro for testing quality of my AI image models. Sure, my MacBook Pro and AMD/Nvidia Work station, and A100 in cloud are for heavier workloads. Ability to run inference on specific models on IPad Pro, use a pencil to mark or create masks is a breeze in iPad Pro.

 

[TechnoMonk]

I guess this is all very subjective - I have been using an iPad as my main “computer” for 10 years now, but have not heard of ChatGPT until today. Different people, different workflows.

I agree, though, that typing on a laptop is much more efficient.

Yep, if you have lot of typing to do, get a keyboard. Touch isn’t the solution.

 

[floral]

Hm. I half expected this thread to fizzle out after the first 20 replies... astounding how a topic to chew on can unite so many people. Hello new repliers!

 

[Username-already-in-use]

Satire, I assume - aimed at the ill-conceived ‘hot take’ merchants.

 

[IconDRT]

Hi, ChatGPT. "Create a clickbait thread topic about product obsolescence or uselessness for an online forum catering to Apple Inc. aficionados."

 

[TechnoMonk]

Completely agree. The post asks a legitimate question for a limited use case in the OP's situation, but it then uses a headline that exaggerates (and maybe trolls? It's possible) their one use case, which ignores facts, to a blanket statement that the iPad is "useless." Just for clicks and rage replies?

Maybe ChatGPT can replace these ridiculous MR threads with ones that actually make the site better.

Sorry, I should've been more clear in my post. I used the 2021 iPad Pro with the Pencil all the way until ChatGPT found it's way to my circle of friends. I literally couldn't keep up with some of my friends in my class. They used ChatGPT on their Macs and started to work on their drafts much quicker than me. They asked it to summarize PDF's, books, articles. Meanwhile, I sat there with my iPad Pro + Pencil, manually read dense source material like a caveman and took hand written notes, which is much slower than typing on a keyboard. It literally took me 2-3 times longer to begin my initial draft. I honestly feel like the iPad without a keyboard will be relegated to only note taking. At this point, there's no point in getting any iPad other than the base model.

How were you typing on iPad before chatGPT. If anything chatGPT should help you with less typing. Your friends or a grandmother will beat you in typing on keyboard any day.
Sounds like a troll post.

 

[Jumpthesnark]

Sorry, I should've been more clear in my post. I used the 2021 iPad Pro with the Pencil all the way until ChatGPT found it's way to my circle of friends. I literally couldn't keep up with some of my friends in my class. They used ChatGPT on their Macs and started to work on their drafts much quicker than me. They asked it to summarize PDF's, books, articles. Meanwhile, I sat there with my iPad Pro + Pencil, manually read dense source material like a caveman and took hand written notes, which is much slower than typing on a keyboard. It literally took me 2-3 times longer to begin my initial draft. I honestly feel like the iPad without a keyboard will be relegated to only note taking. At this point, there's no point in getting any iPad other than the base model.

You can still do your own work, right? Regardless of what people are saying about AI on social media and how classmates are doing their work? That hasn't changed from a few weeks or months ago?

Is the point of the class to win a race with your classmates? Or to understand the material? I suggest you read "like a caveman" and do the work.

 

[mox358]

You should check out the video for Knowledge Navigator. It’s an old Apple idea, but ChatGPT could interject some of that conversation ability into digital assistants. Of course that’s still a few years away, but if anything I feel like it will be a great asset for reducing the amount of keyboarding needed on an iPad, once the tech evolves some more and we can leverage voice to ChatGPT (or whatever it evolves into).