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We recently launched a ChatGPT powered Bot on one of our Client’s website. Lanser’s on Main is Bryanston’s best Bistro (according to TripAdvisor). They’ve wanted a Bot since ChatGPT was made public in 2022. It makes perfect sense. Why make people wander around your website looking for answers, when they can ask an always learning and intelligent ChatBot, who will give them exactly what they’re looking for?

We trained up ChatGPT on their website and we continue to add to our hundreds long list of questions and answers document. We’re training all the time, as new people use it, and fresh questions are asked.

A Naughty Five Year Old

About a month into our training, we started asking the Bot questions, and quickly discovered the articulate 5 year old lurking somewhere inside of our Bot. I say 5 year old in reference to a TED talk given by Sir Ken Robinson, titled ‘Do Schools Kill Creativity?’. Somewhere in his talk he speaks of a marvelous characteristic of children to try things without the fear of failure. He described children’s behaviour in this regard as, ‘if they don’t know, they’ll have a go’. He then goes on to describe how we lose this characteristic as we grow older.

Well, our Bot ‘has a go, when it doesn’t know’. Our first insight into this was asking it for directions from Sandton City to Lanser’s on Main? It answered articulately and confidently that you needed to turn right on Rivonia Road into William Nicol Drive. And then finished the directions pretty well. What we realised is that William Nicol Drive and Rivonia Road never intersect, so you can’t perform that turn. There’s a road missing.

We appreciated that ‘it had a go’, but having a go can be disastrous in some situations. We’ll keep on watching, tweaking and training, learning the best way to get our Bot up to speed.