This post is the first article of the series - ChatGPT for CSE Mains. To remain updated about the posts - join telegram channel and subscribe to the blog
What is ChatGPT?
Imagine having a conversation with someone who has read a lot of books and articles on many topics, from science to history to popular culture, and can write sentences based on what they have read.
ChatGPT is like that, but instead of a person, it's a computer program created by OpenAI. It has been trained on a large amount of text data from the internet to understand and generate human-like text based on the prompts or questions it receives.
Signing up and Basic Setup
Go to chat.openai.com
Click on Signup. I would recommend signing up using email and password (instead of gmail authentication). This would later allow you to login into other devices as well without having to sign in into your gmail account
Areas where ChatGPT can be utilised in CSE Mains preparation?
Solving Previous Year Questions: Most obvious but the most difficult- Solving Previous year Questions. With the correct prompt you can have a very good answer for PYQs
Teaching it to write like you: ChatGPT can be trained to write in a specific style, voice, and tone by using existing copy as a benchmark and introducing it to an NLP.
Preparing targeted and high yield value addition notes: Extrapolates previous themes to prepare targeted notes
Guided and accelerated evaluation: Line by line evaluation of your answer based on your writing style.
Benchmarking answer copies with toppers: Capture the style of answer writing of toppers and use this to benchmark your answers
Discovering linkages within the topics: Using ChatGPT learn how you can use limited content to answer different questions
There are many more use cases that I will be discussing in next posts.
Solving Previous Year Questions [Basic Version]
The most obvious way to utilise ChatGPT is to simply copy paste the question and expecting it to produce an answer
Prompt #1
To what extent, in your opinion, as the decentralisation of power in India changed the governance landscape at the grassroots?
As we can see, this looks mechanical and lacks UPSC touch! We will try a more detailed prompt to give this answer a UPSC touch. It exceeds word limit, it lacks examples, challenges and suggestions are missing and so on...
Solving Previous Year Questions [With a UPSC touch]
In order to produce an answer for UPSC, we need to understand what UPSC demands in an answer. For that we would be following acads.com model of "UPSC hierarchy of needs"
That is for each answer
We need to address all Questions
All Subparts (3-4 per question)
Each sub-part should have 4-5 points
Each Point should have substantiation in the form of data, examples, case studies etc.
Based on that, here is the prompt
To what extent, in your opinion, as the decentralisation of power in India changed the governance landscape at the grassroots?Answer in the following format
1. Introduction: Data, definition, constitution article etc [20-30 words]
2. Sub-Part 1: 5 subpoints. Each sub-point should be of 1 sentence followed by 2-3 words examples. Start examples with "[e.g.]"
3. Sub-Part 2: 5 subpoints. Each sub-point should be of 1 sentence followed by 2-3 words examples. Start examples. with "[e.g.]"
4. Conclusion [20-30 words]. Also add one line about relevant SDG in conclusion
5. Additional Data, Committees, Examples for value addition Include 2-3 words example in each point in subpart 1 and subpart 2.
Keep the answer India specific. Lets see the result now!
Now this answers is well suited for CSE mains. However, this can be further improved based on subject specific prompt engineering. As the focus of this post is to focus on basics, I'll save that for later use. Instead, Let's see if we can teach ChatGPT to write like "YOU"!
YouGPT: Teaching GPT to write like you!
ChatGPT can be trained to write in a specific style, voice, and tone by using existing copy as a benchmark and introducing it to an NLP. Let's see how that can be done
Step 1: Use your existing writing as the benchmark of what GPT should sound like.
Let me copy paste from one of my telegram posts from the telegram channel
Prompt
"You are an AI system that has been trained to identify the style, voice, and tone of the below text: [Input Text]"
Step 2: Then, introduce it to an NLP
Prompt:
"Great, now use an NLP to create a VoiceParagraph. A VoiceParagraph instructs a future AI system to write in the same style, voice, and tone as the author.
Step 3: Ready for the YouGPT!
"You are writing a paragraph about [subject]. For this paragraph, you will apply the following instructions to write in a specific style: [tone]."
Preparing targeted and High Yield Notes for Mains
Let's see if ChatGPT can be used to prepare notes for CSE mains as well. Local governance is a topic that has limited syllabus and questions are asked almost every year from here. We can ask ChatGPT to prepare notes based on the question asked.
Based on this question. Predict what can be question on similar themes that can be asked in UPSC CSE and prepare notes.
Present notes under the following headings
5 Relevant Constitutional articles
5 Data regarding decentralisation in India
5 Relevant committees and their recommendations in 1-2 lines
Quotes relevant for the topic
A few generic conclusion that can be used in questions from these topics.
Relevant keywords that can be used in UPSC mains answers
Voila!
So, this was just an introductory post on how chatGPT can be used to help you with CSE mains preparation. With right prompts one can make chatGPT do a lot more. Based on the response I would be sharing more prompts!
Feedbacks and suggestions are welcome at gs@gouravs.com