Getting Started with ChatGPT and AI Chatbots

An Introduction to Generative AI Tools (BCS User Guides, Book 1)

By: Mark Pesce

Narrated by: Mark Pesce

Learn how to use ChatGPT, Bing Chat/Copilot, and Gemini (Bard) to get the most out of these powerful tools.

ChatGPT has become a tool hundreds of millions use every day—yet few have mastered the art of sweet-talking these new AI chatbots into providing detailed and accurate responses to user prompts. It's vital for every professional tech user to have an understanding of how AI chatbots work, and how best to put them to work.

While the fear is that AI will take people’s jobs, it is more likely to be someone using AI that will!

Getting Started with ChatGPT and AI Chatbots explores the ‘big three’ AI chatbots—OpenAI ChatGPT, Microsoft/Windows Copilot and Google Gemini (Bard)—demystifying their operation, and providing a wealth of tools for thinking about how to talk to these smart tools.

Whether you're a business user, a tech student, or a curious professional, this book is for you to understand and demystify Large Language Models (LLMs) and generative AI tools, harnessing them to enhance your role.

©2023 Mark Pesce (P)2024 BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT

Critic reviews

This book is a must-read for anyone considering using generative AI in business. Authored in non-technical language, it walks through the origins of the first chatbot into the current generative AI landscape including ChatGPT, Copilot and Bard. Furthermore, the guidance on effective prompting to achieve the right results, and a list of critical dos and don'ts to protect sensitive data really make this an all-round winner. Top marks BCS, highly recommended! (Pauline Norstrom, Founder and CEO, Anekanta® Consulting and Anekanta® AI)

This book provides practical guidance on the use of a rapidly growing technologies referred to as AI chatbots, that offer a substantial productivity advantage to those adept at crafting precise prompts and understanding their diverse applications. It is a valuable resource for mastering these emerging tools, ensuring not only competitiveness but also enabling a focus on the creative and compelling facets of one's work. I highly recommend everyone to read this book and glean insights on wielding this potent power proficiently to remain competent. (Rashik Parmar MBE FBCS, Group CEO, BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT)

In late November 2022, ChatGPT introduced a major advance in Artificial Intelligence that surprised almost everyone, including many experts in AI. Trained on text from billions of books and webpages, it can thoughtfully answer questions on a huge variety of topics and languages. The increase in our capability to access human knowledge is analogous to the increase provided by the internet in 1993. For both technologies, getting good answers requires knowing how to ask the right questions. In this timely and important book, Mark Pesce, who has been at the forefront of new digital technologies for over 30 years, provides a compelling and comprehensive introduction to ChatGPT and how to use it. (Professor Ken Goldberg, William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering, UC Berkeley)