Using ChatGPT

Getting set up

ChatGPT is an AI assistant made by OpenAI. Open chatgpt.com in a browser, or install the app on your phone or computer, and sign up with your email or a Google account. There's a free plan, and paid plans with more usage and features.

Everything starts in the message box. Three habits make most answers better straight away:

• Say who it's for. "Explain it for a 15-year-old" or "for my boss, who has two minutes."
• Say what shape you want. A list, a table, a short email, three options to choose from.
• Give it the facts it can't know. Your prices, your location, your deadline, your numbers.

Compare:

Tell me about marketing.

I sell handmade leather sandals on Instagram from Kano, ₦12,000-₦18,000 a
pair, mostly to women aged 20-35. Give me five low-cost ways to get more
customers this month, each with one concrete action I can do this week.
Put it in a table: idea, action, rough cost.

The first gets a textbook overview. The second gets a plan.

The layout of ChatGPT changes from time to time. If a button in this module looks different on your screen, look for the nearest match.

Analyse your own numbers, then check

You can paste a small table, or attach a spreadsheet with the attach button (a paperclip or +), and ask questions in plain English. Here's six months of sales from a small cosmetics shop. Paste it into ChatGPT:

Month,Sales (NGN)
January,820000
February,760000
March,905000
April,990000
May,930000
June,1150000

These are my shop's monthly sales. Which month had the biggest percentage
increase on the month before? Show the month-on-month change for every month
in a table, then tell me in two sentences what the trend is.

For data like this, ChatGPT often writes and runs a little code behind the scenes to do the maths, and you can usually open a "view analysis" link to see it. That makes it much more reliable than mental arithmetic, but not infallible: it can misread a column, skip a row, or answer a slightly different question from the one you meant.

So check the one number you'll act on, in a calculator or spreadsheet. For month-on-month change: (this month ÷ last month − 1) × 100.

Research with sources you check

For anything current (prices, rules, news, requirements), ask ChatGPT to search the web. When it searches, it shows its sources as links. Your job is to open them.

Search the web: what are the current requirements and fees to register a
business name in Nigeria? Use the official Corporate Affairs Commission
(CAC) website as the main source, and tell me the date of the page you used.

When you check a source, ask three questions:

1. Does the page exist and is it the organisation it claims to be? An official fee should come from the official site, not a blog quoting it.
2. Does it actually say what the answer says? AI sometimes cites a real page for a claim the page doesn't make.
3. Is it current? A 2019 page about fees may be out of date.

Here's what a check looks like in practice. Suppose ChatGPT answered:

Registering a business name costs ₦10,000 and takes about 48 hours,
according to the CAC [1]. You'll also need a valid means of ID [2].

[1] smallbiztips-ng.blogspot.com/2021/cac-guide
[2] cac.gov.ng - Business Name Registration

Source 1 is a blog from 2021 quoting a fee: not good enough for a fee. Source 2 is the official site, so you'd open it and check both the fee and the ID requirement there, and trust the official page if they disagree.

Make it yours: personalisation

In ChatGPT's settings, under Personalisation (or Customise ChatGPT), you can tell it about yourself and how you want answers written. These custom instructions apply to new chats, so you don't repeat them.

About me: I'm a final-year accounting student in Lagos, preparing for
graduate analyst interviews.
How to respond: British English. Short answers first, then detail only if
I ask. Use Nigerian examples and naira. If you're not sure of a fact, say
so instead of guessing. Never write assignments for me: explain and give
feedback instead.

ChatGPT may also remember things you tell it across chats (memory), and you can see and delete what it has remembered in the settings. Both are worth checking once, so you know what it knows about you.

Try it

Use ChatGPT (or another assistant) for the first one, then check the answer yourself before typing it.

Then open your own research answer's sources and check one claim against the official page.