How to Chat ... With a Bot

UNTIL 2022, it seemed that a chatbot’s highest calling was to lasso you to an e-commerce website until a customer service rep popped up to actually help. But recent “large language models” like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini can write speeches, whip up computer code—even provide relationship advice.

The uninitiated are frequently surprised at what chatbots can do, says Assistant Professor Naeemul Hassan. To make sure those AI surprises are beneficial, the computational journalism expert offers tips on asking questions the right way (and that doesn’t mean saying “please”).

If you have a precise vision—like a trip across Italy that must include seeing certain artworks—unload everything on the chatbot. “In journalism, we have the five Ws, one H concept: ‘who, what, when, where, why—and how?’” Hassan says. “Try to include some of that when you make the query.”

Throw the query wide open if you’re just looking for ideas: “Provide artsy options for a life-changing Italy trip.” Chatbots have an uncanny ability to speedily parse mountains of online data to make interesting connections people often can’t, Hassan says.

Chatbots aren’t just about creating. They can slice and dice text to order, like creating summaries and high-level overviews of complex documents, Hassan says. If you’re writing for multiple audiences, they’re good at altering the tone and reading level while keeping the core message.

Chatbots can be gregarious know-it-alls, but they frequently err, sometimes conjuring fictions known as “hallucinations,” prioritizing user acceptance over factuality or harboring deep biases. “They’re far from 100% accurate, particularly when logical reasoning is needed,” Hassan says.