im reading the wealth of nations right now, using gpt on the side to help clarify long passages and decode archaic terms. it's been tremendously helpful. some actual use cases:

- summarising entire chapters (summarise chapter 8 of book 1)

- asking to verify my own summaries (in summary, smith writes that ... am i correct?)

- explaining certain passages in ever more detail (explain ...; explain in simpler terms; im still confused, explain in more details;)

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One very interesting case is when GPT produced an error, and I had it go through the error with me. In the end GPT managed to spot its own error and correct itself. Here's an excerpt, edited for brevity:

* gpt: [...] When the demand is too low, it encourages growth; when the demand is too high, it restrains growth. [...]

* me: "When the demand is too low, it encourages growth; when the demand is too high, it restrains growth." is this correct?

* g: Apologies for the confusion in my previous response. The correct statement should be:

When the demand for labor is too low (slow), it encourages higher wages and population growth; when the demand for labor is too high (fast), it restrains population growth by adjusting wages to find the equilibrium between demand and supply.

(GPT still giving the wrong answer.)

* m: i am still confused. can you explain in more detail

* g: [...] Smith argues that the demand for labor regulates population growth by influencing wages. If wages are too low, fewer children will be born, and the population growth will be slow. If wages are too high, more children will be born, and the population growth will be fast. [...]

(At this point GPT was able to give me the correct response.)

* m: so when the demand for labour is low, wages decrease and population growth slows down. when the demand is high, wages increase and population growth speeds up. correct?

* g: Yes, that's correct. [...]

(I pointed out that this was in contradiction with the earlier response.)

* m: did you not contradict yourself? "When the demand is too low, it encourages growth; when the demand is too high, it restrains growth."

* g: Apologies for the confusion in my previous response. I misunderstood your question. Let me clarify:

When the demand for labor is too low, it restrains growth; when the demand is too high, it encourages growth.

So, when the demand for labor is low, wages decrease, and population growth slows down. Conversely, when the demand for labor is high, wages increase, and population growth speeds up. I hope this clears up any confusion.

(I then inserted the original erroneous response as a prompt, and gpt was able to "remember" that it generated the response earlier.)

* m: "When the demand is too low, it encourages growth; when the demand is too high, it restrains growth." what is wrong with this passage?

* g: I apologize for the confusion earlier. There is an error in the passage you provided. It should be:

This demand for labor operates like the demand for any other commodity, regulating the production and growth of the population. When the demand is too low, it restrains growth; when the demand is too high, it encourages growth. This dynamic determines the rate of population growth in different countries, such as rapid growth in North America, slow and gradual growth in Europe, and a stationary population in China.

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i should mention that i am using the paid version (GPT-4). i tried the free model, but the quality was significantly worse. you can recorrect it multiple times consecutively and every time it would say that it was wrong the last time, and recorrect itself again and again.