12/09/2022
I am dumbfounded by ChatGPT. After exploring the concept of terminal velocity in prose, poetry, and code, I decided to take ChatGPT on a spin with math. I asked ChatGPT to give me Python code that generates a Mandelbrot set. It gave me code, but it wouldn’t run on my iPad due to a missing function. Turns out Pythonista on my iPad had NumPy 1.8, not the 1.10 version that ChatGPT was expecting. I thought I’d have to figure out the workaround myself, but then remembered I was talking to ChatGPT. Would it know about API versions? I said, “make the code compatible with numpy 1.8”. It made the appropriate changes and gave me the new code! The code ran, but gave pretty boring output. Black and white only. So I said, “Give it some color”. ChatGPT added a few lines of code to create an RGB color map. It was still kind of boring, so I said, “Make it be a rainbow”. A couple added lines of code ramped the red, green, and blue channels up and down to make a rainbow colormap. I then asked ChatGPT to “zoom in on an interesting point”. It changed the code to do so and explained what part of the code it was modifying and why. Here’s a screenshot of some of the work in progress.
ChatGPT and AIs like it are going to transform education! I have an infinitely patient tutor sitting right next to me, showing me exactly how to explore whatever concept I wish to learn about.
