The tools that OpenAI has provided and continues to provide have changed my career in more ways in one year than my decade in the industry. I hope one day to share all the tools I have created using the various GPT models in ways that can benefit other civil engineers.
GPT-4o has opened up use cases I previously thought to be too difficult or resource-intensive. It has transformed the way I think about work on a daily basis. I spend late nights building more tools to help me the next day and have never felt more invigorated for my career or personal development.
All that needs to be said is, āThank you, OpenAI. Thank you for providing all of us with the tools to change our lives.ā
There are a lot of the typical RAG use cases, but the best examples I find myself actually using week to week are Meeting Minutes, Report Reviewing, & Material/Requirement Conflicts during a Design.
Iāve been using it in various ways too! One way is to help me work out the technical details of a prototype Iāve been wanting to build for years. Itās really helped me brainstorm my thoughts and provided amazing suggestions to solve problems that I wasnāt able to think of a solution on my own.
This warms my heart. 4o has been an absolute game changer for me. My little one called me a coder last night (not a coder) . Through late nights itās helped me build my school for neurodivergent kids and their parents. I will forever be grateful. What a time to be alive.
Soā¦long story short I had a career, daughter was diagnosed with ASDā¦tried lots of different schools, rich, poor, differentā¦then decided to build my own.
I have always believed in project-based education rather than subject-based education and as a management consultant (now former lol) the fact that we still teach in silos is outdated and lazy (hard to turn around the Titanic) considering so much of life is systems-based thinking.
Soā¦how does this relate to the school? Well, rather than teaching kids what to think, I based it on the premise of teaching kids HOW to think.
If you weave values and ethics in, youāve a good foundation for a robust model that is better suited to industry which is sorely needed. Iāve seen massive disconnects between a lot of industries and secondary and tertiary education.
I was talking to IBM in 2019 about why education hasnāt jumped on something like this. They said nobody had approached them to use AI to help learn how neurodivergent kids learn and think, and be able to apply best pedagogical approaches to support their most natural development. They actually said nobody education (Australia).
I wonāt say too much, as my daughter and another student is student #1 and #2, so this has been a tough slog thatās taken four years.
Itās cost me more than I ever imagined it would and this is the first year I take it to market.
But itās my goal and I wonāt stopā¦Iāve been to research data centres that used machine learning when I was in corporate for projects and I never thought weād have anything like this democratised and Iāll forever be grateful for OpenAI.
I am happy to confirm that Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT in particular, has changed more than my professional life: I finally have something with a long enough attention span to talk toāespecially as that attention span (Context Window) grows.
I also have a tool that can help immediately translate what I have to say into something more digestible for neurotypical folk; or, help me to understand something I havenāt been able to before, because it will patiently answer ALL of my questions.
It sounds like youāre on the right track. AI is a tool whose principal understanding of the world is verbalāwhich grants an immediate āsimilarityā for any neurodivergent person that might have a non-verbal learning disorder, like yours truly.
Set up a g-rated CustomGPT and let your kid go to town. Theyāll dazzle you with how quickly they understand.
Literally today talking to a parent and saying that itās us adults who have to āfree-fallā. Iām excited because itās the first time we have flipped the script. The kid is now in the lead and will lead with what he wants to do that session. His assistant/customGPT gives choices and off he goes. Today he made choices that if mapped would be the equivalent of turn right, but then do a loop and skip to another dimension .
They lead the learning session. The adults have to completely unlearn what learning is about.
My favourite quote and the tagline for my school is Senecaās Non Scholae sed vitae discimus - we do not learn for school but for life; I finally feel, as the teacher learning to code in order to data analyse and in turn pedagogical dance to the beat of the students drum, this is that saying in real life.
Chatgpt has made the project-based life (read:education) a reality.
Final side-note: a chuckle at your comment about someone patient enough to listen and the ability to distil in order to communicate to neurotypicalā¦made me lol hard as this is so familiar. I have all of my character and length values set to max in the input fields and itās the kids with their phones and voice to text in their own serverā¦the parents job now being the distiller so that tomes donāt ensue. I love this job. We are all learning and building THEIR apps as they go along and grow. Honestly. Truly incredible.
Very pleased to hear that. I think when we reach AGI, we will be able to experience all the delights of AI. However, the new voice capabilities of GPT-4o are already mesmerizing, and I think this is the first step towards AGI. What do you think?
OpenAI has been one of the greatest invention ever created for me. I only develop websites with wordpress, but with openai, Iāve been able to build hundreds of tools with just simple prompts.
I use Omni through my Saas software platform. Itās amazing.
It changed my life a year ago, as well. As a Coach and Creator - thereās very little I canāt create. Are you seeking any specific user cases? Happy to share.
. Through late nights itās helped me build my school for neurodivergent kids and their parents. I will forever be grateful. What a time to be alive. 
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