Background: For the past three days, I have been using ChatGPT-4 as a PHP programmer. Primarily, I explained the general flow of the program and had it handle the detailed implementation. However, when I was struggling with decisions, such as asking, “Which is better, A or B?”, the responses often included headings, bullet points, and even code outputs, making it difficult to have a discussion. To address this, I created a rule called “Concise Mode” where the answers are kept brief, but ChatGPT frequently forgets this rule and provides lengthy responses. I believe this is likely due to the fact that keeping answers short requires significant effort for ChatGPT. Given this background, I am submitting the following request. (Of course, I relied on ChatGPT to draft this as well.)
Specific Request:
Concise Mode:
Add a mode where responses are concise, with each response limited to one sentence per topic.
By default, detailed explanations should be avoided, with additional details provided only when necessary.
Handling Misunderstandings:
Implement a brief confirmation process to correct misunderstandings, which would help prevent long responses based on incorrect assumptions.
Benefits:
This would greatly improve usability for users who prefer concise responses or need smoother interactions.
It would reduce unnecessary information and enable more efficient communication by preventing long-winded explanations due to misunderstandings.
where you could enter your instructions so they’ll be remembered
One thing you can also consider doing is creating a custom gpt (these custom instructions are basicaly the same thing)
I don’t think so. It depends of course what you mean with effort, but if you mean that it’s basically muscle memory for the models at this point, then you’d probably be right. But if you already have a prompt (instruction) that can circumvent that behavior, putting it into these instruction boxes should get you 90% of the way there.
I was going to suggest that if you want shorter answers you should try an instruction like “all answers should be the length of a tweet”. It might seem like this is the same as saying “keep your answers concise “ but it’s not.
These models are just pattern matchers and they have seen millions of examples of tweets in their training data. It’s not clear what the pattern for “conciseness” looks like. Probably a lot like a tweet.
You’ll generally get better results if your instructions directly correlate to a pattern of some sort.
Thank you for your response and for the warm welcome to the community!
I really appreciate the advice about customizing ChatGPT. I’ll definitely try using custom instructions to make the concise communication more effective. I’m looking forward to seeing how this improves the interaction.
I’m also interested in creating a custom GPT as you suggested. I haven’t tried that yet, but I’ll give it a shot. I’m excited to see how these features can enhance my experience with ChatGPT.
Thank you as well for the new suggestion about using an instruction like “all answers should be the length of a tweet.” That’s a very specific and concrete way to frame it, which makes a lot of sense considering how these models work as pattern matchers. I’ll definitely give that a try and see how it works in practice.
I might reach out for more advice in the future. I appreciate your help!
Thank you both for your suggestions. I tried customizing the settings, and it worked out great—I’m getting nice, concise responses now. Your quick help was much appreciated!
