Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Reader Nadeja concurs with Linden Lab staffer "Soft" on the value of using Large Language Models to help with creating/exploring Second Life related content — and has further tips, especially for Microsoft's LLM Copilot: 

I was doing similar things for months. For small scripts and functions, GPT-4 is a time saver, it can also handle regular expressions (regex) well enough. Processing natural language is the job of language models, so it is commonly used for summarizing, making lists, revising and many other things. And it can also help with finding ideas and brainstorming as he said.

Note that GPT-4 was available for free since early 2023 until recently on Microsoft's chatbot (now Copilot). Also, unlike the free ChatGPT, Copilot can search the web for the latest information. Moreover, in the Precise mode (teal color), Copilot provides more concise responses and with reduced hallucinations (the Creative one is the opposite, but it's meant to create, invent things).

However, now the free version of Copilot has GPT-4 only during non-peak times. Also the default mode, Balanced, didn't use the best model since a long time (and I'm not sure if Precise is still GPT-4 either).

On the other hand, ChatGPT may be more versatile with custom instructions, regenerate answers and has other features. The free version of Copilot, other than web search, can also create and analyze images, has voice, and so on.

Nadeja also provides some more background on LLMs avoiding some of the "spicier" questions that Grok will answer:

ChatGPT and Copilot are known to be a little on the puritan side (Copilot would answer, but then the filter would often delete the answer).

In that case, if used as a search assistant, with a similar question asked by Soft to Grok, I asked Copilot something a little more interesting for a SL user: "What are the events in Second Life for February 2024 and which one of them may offer free items?"

The link will open in Balanced mode, but it was performed in Precise mode) Copilot listed the events and concluded:

As for the events that may offer free items, the Lovers Lane Grid-Wide Hunt and the Valentine’s Shop & Hop Event seem to be promising. They are offering Valentine themed gifts and bargains. Also, the Love Is All You Need 4! – Grid Wide Hunt is celebrating the month of Love and Valentine’s Day with loving prizes and Exclusives. Please check the event details for more information. Enjoy your time in Second Life!

That's correct and Copilot also provided a link to the source. Of course you could just search or go to grid-affair yourself, but it's an example how it can extract information from the results and text in general.

Fun stuff! It also solidifies my opinion that calling this "artificial intelligence" has been incredibly counter-productive. If we instead had called programs like ChatGPT and Copilot "natural language search engines", we'd see more emphasis on their genuine utility, versus more fevered hand-wringing about The Apocalyptic Future of AI.