I’m experimenting with AI language models such as ChatGPT. I’ve used phind.com quite a bit, which is powered by ChatGPT, but today I went directly to ChatGPT itself. It’s a great tool! This is really going to change programming and web development in the months and years to come. It has already changed it a bit. But I have run into a number of problems with it, too! As such, ChatGPT is not going to replace the programmer or web developer, at least not in its current state. And I want to reitterate, even in the long run, I see the developer working with AI rather than AI replacing the developer.

So here are some of the challenges I’m running into with ChatGPT.

The Character Limit⌗

I have been working on a client relationship manager in bash script to use for myself. I had no problems with this at first. However, I noticed as the script became more complex, ChatGPT would often times stop producing output.

I discovered that ChatGPT has a character limit. Now, supposedly I can get around this by saying “Go on” or “Continue from line insert line here.” But even in trying this, this isn’t working 100%. It seems ChatGPT gave me a good base for the script, but it’s going to be useless as the script becomes more complex. ChatGPT is great to give you a starter boilerplate. It’s also great for coming up with regex expressions. As someone who has learned multiple languages over the years, it can probably easily remind me how to do certain things with different languages, as I get syntaxes confused on occasion. But if it can’t complete the code, that’s going to be a problem. A programmer is going to need to do that.

Syntax Errors⌗

ChatGPT is prone to syntax errors. Granted, the language model can often times find the syntax errors when you point out that there’s a problem. But even this hasn’t been perfect, from my experience.

While it has fixed some of its own syntax errors, too often - if I rely solely on ChatGPT to code, I will be in a continuous loop of errors, and often times changing code back and forth that ChatGPT says is the fix. Sometimes it doesn’t even understand the main error, and is sidetracked by some other detail that isn’t the real problem. I experimented with GJS a bit and the main problem was the version of GTK wasn’t even being declared in the javascript. But that was the main error I was getting back. Even when giving ChatGPT the exact error, it thought the problem was something else, and I literally had to tell it “It looks like we’re not telling it what version of GTK we’re using.” Then and only then did it correct the problem. There were still other problems with the code, but the GTK version was finally declared.

Inaccurate Information⌗

Getting away from programming, I wanted to ask ChatGPT about other information. I asked it to tell me what the price of the Discovery Session was at Fearless Geek Media. It would give me wrong answers, such as free, $150, $75, etc. At the time of writing this, the Discovery Session price mentioned on the website is $50.

Even before that, I asked it about information about Fearless Geek Media. It thought that Fearless Geek Media was a website about all things geek, such as comic books, sci-fi, etc. And while I’m absolutely into that, I think it’s obvious that we do website design, development, and other digital branding tasks. It was easily able to fix that when I told it that it was wrong. But ChatGPT couldn’t even figure out the Discovery Session price, even with a little help. I had to tell it that the Discovery Session price was $50.

It Has Memory Issues⌗

Even if I ask ChatGPT again about the Discovery Session, it doesn’t get the price right. It forgot.

When working on the bash script, I find that sometimes it forgets that I’m doing bash scripting and switches to Python or Javascript. That’s a bit annoying. You’re definitely going to get some syntax errors if you’re not careful. (I should note that phind.com, which is powered by GPT, doesn’t seem to suffer as badly from this.) It’s memory issues don’t seem to be as bad as Google Bard. However, even today, it told me it doesn’t have the capability to remember details that I give it, even though sometimes it does remember - at least for a short time anyway.

Conclusion⌗

ChatGPT is a great tool and, along with other AI tools, is revolutionizing the tech industry as well as other industries. But with web development along with many other fields, I don’t see it taking over too many jobs. Some jobs may disappear, but others will be transformed. This idea that the programmer is obsolete is, in my opinion, nonsense. But I do see AI as a great tool - a partner, if you will - that assists the programmer or anyone else who may be using it. Even in something like copywriting, I could see a copywriter needing to change wording because of any inaccuracies or details that the AI cannot get right.

So don’t buy into the fear mongering about ChatGPT and AI. Also use, but don’t over-rely, on AI. AI isn’t perfect. AI gets a lot of things wrong. It will get better. But it will likely hit a wall where it will need the human to take over and continue from there.