You can’t permanently train ChatGPT to write in a certain style
Something wild I discovered while studying French
My tagline is on the med in marseille.
And that’s because, as obvious as it sounds, I live in Marseille in the south of France. It’s been a little over a year since I moved here.
So, naturally, I’m trying to learn French.
I say ‘trying’ because this is the second time I’ve attempted to learn another language. I lived in Lisbon for five or so years before Marseille. And outside of ordering food and drinks and some very basic conversation, I never actually learnt Portuguese.
Something better about Marseille than Lisbon though, from a language learning point of view, is that the level of English here is much lower.
For example, my apartment opens up onto a courtyard that is shared by five other apartments. The people that live in the other apartments are of varying ages. None of them speak English. The guy next door to me, André, I don’t think he would even know how to say ‘thank you’ in English. That is the level he is at.
Essentially, I have to learn French. Sink or swim as they say.
But I’ve learnt that languages don’t just come to me by osmosis. My aural learning is practically non-existent. And any language teachers I’ve tried so far, I didn’t like them.
And so, I’ve been trying to come up with a way to learn.
What seems to work best for me is to learn to read. I like books and I like reading in general, so I guess this makes sense.
The way I’ve been doing this, is to translate a short novel.
It’s a very old-school way to learn another language. But I’ve been doing it with a contemporary twist.
Enter ChatGPT.
My process is very simple. I copy out, by hand, a few sentences of the French text. I then type those same sentences into ChatGPT. I have a thread set up with some simple rules. The basic gist is, I want two translations. One that is as literal as it can be while still being sensical in English. And the second to be a natural translation.
I then write the English translation down in my note book below the french.
The object of having the literal translation is that it helps me understand the basic underlying structure of French and the mechanics of how the language works. I can see it on the page.
It’s working too. My reading is getting decent.
It’s allowing me to do other things too, such as watching French YouTube channels with the CC turned on. Help make sense of the sound of French.
But let’s get back to the point I was trying to make in the title.
I noticed that every few days, the supposedly literal translation that ChatGPT gave me would become less literal. It would start to look a lot like the natural translation that I was also getting.
I’d remind ChatGPT of the rules.
After a while of this, and me being periodically exasperated. I decided to ask GPT what the hell is going on.
The screenshot above is the summary I got ChatGPT to make of the answers it gave me after I quizzed it for a little.
As you can see, it simply drifts back to its original training. It won’t stay with the (very simple) rules I gave it.
And that got me thinking.
Would it do the same with writing tasks? Just revert to its training, despite whatever I told it I wanted it to do.
The answer is yes.
