In this episode of The Dietitian Success Podcast, Krista Kolodziejzyk delves into the world of AI, focusing on ChatGPT. Are these tools friends or foes in the realm of nutrition? With so many apprehensions about new tech, let’s flip the narrative and explore the positive impacts of integrating these tools into nutrition practice.
Specifically, she covers:
- Ways in which she believes that ChatGPT can be used to improve your research, workflow and content
- Ways in which ChatGPT is not effective
- Alongside practical examples of how to design prompts for ChatGPT so you can get what you need out of the platform
Links:
- Access our freebies – the Business Planning Workbook, Client Resource Kit & PES Statements Cheat Sheet here: https://www.dietitiansuccesscenter.com/freebie
- Learn more about DSC https://www.dietitiansuccesscenter.com/
Episode Transcript:
have been spending this summer. Knee deep in creating a new program that we have coming out in the fall, in September specifically, we are launching.
A counseling and coaching certificate program, and this has been in response to countless requests that we’ve gotten from D S C members around wanting more. Practical training and education when it comes to feeling comfortable working with clients or patients. And so we decided to take this summer and fall to really try and address this challenge and come up with a super comprehensive program that is going to be.
Amazing. I just gotta say that as we’re working through it right now, I’m so excited to bring it to you. It is a multi-part program. It’s just so good. I’m not gonna say a ton about it because in the next. Few weeks. I’m actually gonna be recording a multi-part podcast series where I’m gonna break down exactly how we are creating this program now, and that’s gonna come out at the end of August.
And I did this when I launched D S C. Some of you might remember those podcast episodes that came out. Oh, they would be, I should have pulled the episode numbers, but they would’ve been around March, 2021. And they documented, it was a series of three episodes that documented sort of the start to finish process of actually building D S C.
So I talked about everything. I talked about, how I came up with the idea. The tech, the like, all the different components, my thought processes around pricing and all of those things. And I got a lot of great feedback on that because I think it was a really interesting learning experience for a lot of people to see what that insider perspective looks like when it comes to actually starting a business.
And so I’m gonna do the same thing with this program. For those of you that are interested in online course creation or online program creation of some sort, I think this is gonna be a really interesting. Episode series for you. So gonna share that again. The first episode’s gonna come out at the end of August, so that’s what we’ve been working on in the background.
That’s the rationale behind this brief podcast hiatus. But for today, I wanna talk about chat, G p t, and I wanna talk about artificial intelligence, and I wanna talk about whether these tools are friends or foes when it comes to us. As nutrition practitioners this is a topic I’ve wanted to talk about for a little while now because it’s really important and I think actually I know, and I’ll tell you why.
I know in a minute. There’s a lot of fear and uncertainty and questioning and. Avoidance, I think when it comes to this topic of artificial intelligence and the tool chat, g p t, which is probably the most commonly known at this point, AI tool. And so I wanna talk about what we’ve learned from using artificial intelligence and tools like chat G p T in my own business in D S C and what that.
Just what that’s looking like for us and my reflections on what tools like this can be really helpful for and what they’re not helpful for. And to give you some inspiration and some ideas when it comes to your own business and just hopefully to educate and to clarify a little bit around what these tools are and what they’re not when it comes to dietetic practice, because I think that, we can’t.
Avoid talking about this topic. A lot of times when there’s new innovation, there’s a lot of fear surrounding that innovation and that fear comes from the what ifs, right? It’s like the what if this replaces my job? What if this, what does this mean for me? What if? And Instead, I’d love to flip the script a little bit and talk about some of the positive what ifs.
Talk about how you know these tools can actually really be leveraged in a super positive and innovative way to enhance. Practice versus detract from practice. And so that’s really my goal with today’s podcast episode. And I’m gonna share some real world examples of like how we are using these tools, what’s worked, what hasn’t worked, et cetera, et cetera.
I’m also gonna comment a little bit on. Some of the things that I’ve learned just with regards to how to use them effectively. Some of just the, like legalities, obviously I’m not a lawyer, but I did attend a really interesting conference virtual conference session a few weeks back on the legalities when it comes to artificial intelligence generated content.
So I just wanna comment on that a little bit, just open up a little discussion there. And yeah, my goal here is to approach this from a bit of a. Let’s talk about this in a curious way versus a judgmental way. Let’s explore what chat g p t looks like and how it might be able to enhance our practices.
And interestingly, I think one of the big things that actually prompted me talking about this topic and recording this podcast episode is that a while back, earlier this year, I presented a session. A virtual se session at a conference related to trends in the world of nutrition and in the world of food.
And one of the things I talked about was actually artificial intelligence and chat, G p T. And what was really interesting is I had a, and I don’t remember if it was more than one or if it was just the one, but there was There was some very negative commentary that came in with regards to my perspectives and thoughts on artificial intelligence and chat G p T.
And so I thought that was really interesting. Honestly, I thought it was really interesting, somebody was really upset with my perspective on ai. And I thought it would be interesting to bring this topic to the podcast and to get your guys’ thoughts on it, to present my thoughts on it and hopefully stimulate a little bit more of a conversation versus a, I’m avoiding this because I don’t really understand it.
That’s my goal here. That’s what I’m trying to do. So let’s start by a little, just a couple of background. Disc, not disclaimers, but a couple background things that I just wanna start off with before I get into the nitty gritty of what is artificial intelligence? What I feel like it can do well, I’m gonna share some examples what I feel like it can’t do well.
And again, I’m gonna share some examples. I’ll talk about how we use it, how we don’t use it. Again, hoping to stimulate some ideas for you in your business. But I wanna start with just a couple of just level setting items. First thing, this is my perspective. I don’t, I’m by no means an expert in artificial intelligence.
At all. I am simply sharing my experience as a user, as a business owner, as an explorer, as someone who is looking at these tools and actively asking the questions of how might these. Enhance my practice versus detract from my practice. I also question, is anyone really an expert in this area right now?
Because it’s so new, it’s so evolving, it’s changing so quickly. I don’t really know. I think we’re all just trying to figure it out. I truly believe as another item that these tools are not going anywhere. So I actually think it’s really essential that we have a foundational understanding, that we all have a foundational understanding of AI tools and what they can and what they can’t do at this current moment in time.
I think that we need to shift our perspectives a little bit if we find ourselves stuck in the fear of the what if, the what if this replaces my job? What if this is dangerous? What if this is all these things to the what if opportunities? Because again, I believe that with every innovation, yes, there’s always changes.
But then there’s also always opportunity that comes out of it too. I do believe from my own experience that AI tools can be revolutionary for nutrition care and nutrition practice, but they need to be used in the right way.
I do not believe at this point that they are replacing. The practitioner at all, and I’m gonna share some examples for you of that. I believe that there’s right and there’s wrong ways to use these tools. And so one of the things that I did recently was I attended this really interesting virtual AI conference a little while back, and.
So a lot of what I’m gonna share and talk about today are things that I actually learned from that virtual conference and then started to implement and started to come up with my own take and perspective on AI and chat G p T. So anyways, that is my starting point. I want to now talk about for those that are super brand new to this area, what is artificial intelligence?
So ai, artificial intelligence, and this is a definition taken directly from online, is a machine’s ability to perform the cognitive functions we usually associate with humid minds. And so humans essentially are asking a machine to generate something for us, and that machine. Does that thing, and so chat, G P T is probably the most common tool associated with AI right now.
You may have heard of it. Essentially chat, G P T is a. Chat box, it’s an, it’s a website, but it’s essentially a chat box where you can ask it to essentially generate any type of content for you. And so it will pull from a large data set of. Text, and it will use this dataset to learn about language, grammar and the structure and meaning of words and sentences to understand the context and the intent of the query.
So what the user is asking it to do, and it will generate an appropriate response. So essentially, in its simplest form, you are asking it to generate something for you, and it does. And so there’s been a lot of other tools that have been built off of this as well. So chat G P T is not the only one by any means.
So we’re seeing a proliferation of marketing tools. One that I’ve used before is called Jasper AI or jasper.ai, and it’s a marketing tool that’s specifically designed to do things like write blog posts or podcast descriptions or Instagram crap captions, et cetera, et cetera. There’s also tools that have been created to generate images.
To create ad copy, to create ad creative Grammarly is even an example of an AI tool. We use the tool called Descrip to, and I’ve talked about this before, to edit and transcribe our podcast episodes. Even Canva, which I’m sure most of us have used at this point, has started to integrate AI into their platform as well.
They have these. I think the newest thing are these like chat bots where you can actually type in a script and then a talking head will talk out that script. I’m gonna warn you, it’s not that great at this point. It’s very robotic. We’ve experimented with it a little bit and the talking heads are just very robotic and they don’t sound great, so we’re not using that at this point.
That’s their first sort of iteration of it and the assumption is that they will only get. Better. But for today’s conversation, I wanna focus primarily on chat. G p T. This is what I personally have the most experience with and what you, what we’ve been using the most when it comes to our business.
And so I wanna split this conversation into two pieces. What. We’re using it for and what I think it can do really well. And then the second piece is what we’re not using it for. What I do not believe that it can do very well. And so let’s start by talking about how we are using it and what I think it can do well.
So what it can do well alright, so from my perspective and my experience, I really believe that the value in chat, g p t is in helping us generate content in response to a really specific need and a really specific request. I’m gonna talk about this in a minute, but, I do not believe that the value in chat g p t is to actually generate original content for us.
So to ask us, write me a blog post, and I’m gonna talk about this again in a minute. Write me a blog post on X topic. I don’t believe that’s how we should be using these platforms or these tools. And that’s because I don’t think that they work very well for those things. And I’ll, again, I’ll share some examples.
What does work well is when we are asking it to give us something super specific. If we ask Chad g p t for something vague, it’s gonna give us something vague in return. And the value of the output is in how you as the user are able to craft the prompt. And that’s been one of the biggest learnings so far with tools like chat g p T is how do you as the user actually craft a prompt?
This is an art, this is a skill. People are teaching about this. People are writing books about this, people are, Or diving deep into this, because if you give it something great, it will give you something great in return. But if you’ve experimented with this platform, and this happened to me right at the beginning because I was like, oh, this is interesting, this is cool.
And I, I actually just asked the question in chat, G p T, just to see what it would come up with. Write me a blog post on prenatal nutrition and what I got. Was a very generic, vague, not good blog post about prenatal nutrition that I would never have posted on my website. And if I had stopped there, I would’ve probably come to the conclusion, oh, this is not that great.
This is not that useful of a tool. But upon further exploration and diving deeper and learning more, I’m actually realizing that. You know me I’m trying to learn the skill of generating the appropriate and the correct prompts to get what I actually want out of tools like chat, G P T.
And so I really believe that chat, G P T, is a super useful tool for giving us specific examples or specific ideas in response to a specific request. I don’t believe that it’s a great tool for generating original. Content, like a blog post from the ground up, for instance. And again, I’ll expand on that a little bit further, but one example of this, of how I think it can work really well, but how we have to use it in a super specific, intentional way is with regards to content ideas.
One of the ways that I first thought about using a tool like Chat, G B T is, oh wouldn’t this be cool if we could use it to generate content topics for Instagram? And so when I first was using the platform and experiment, experimenting with how it could be used, I asked it to generate 10 Instagram content topics about sports nutrition.
That was the prompt that I gave it. And so what it spit out for me were 10 ideas. I. And the ideas were the importance of pre-workout nutrition, hydration tips for athletes, post-workout recovery, meal ideas, snack ideas for endurance athletes, the role of protein in athletic performance, et cetera, et cetera.
I’m not gonna read out all of them, and I was left feeling like, oh, these are really vague. These are really vague. I actually think it’d be super hard to craft an Instagram post around the, these topics be around any of these topics, because they’re just not specific enough, right? The importance of pre-workout nutrition could be talked about in about a thousand different ways.
And so then I thought okay, wait, but maybe this is my fault because I’ve asked it to do something quite I haven’t really given it a lot of instruction here. It’s done the best that it can from what I’ve asked of it. So instead, I reframed my prompt and I said, I asked it to give me 10. Instagram post ideas for a registered dietitian to post that look at popular sports nutrition supplements and that discuss what is fact versus fiction.
Okay. So you can see that is so much more specific, I’m saying right from the perspective of a registered dietitian. So what would a registered dietitian post about? I want you to talk specifically. About sports nutrition supplements, and I could repeat the same prompt for any category of topic that I might talk about under the umbrella of sports nutrition.
And then I’m asking it, Hey, frame these in a way where I can talk about it fact versus fiction. And so now a couple of examples of what it has spit out for me. Fact or fiction. Let’s examine the science behind pre-workout supplements to see if they really boost performance and energy levels. The next one, protein powders.
Separating the truth from the myths, learning about their role in muscle recovery and when they might be beneficial for athletes. The third one, plant-based versus animal-based protein supplements. Which one reigns supreme? The next one, B C A A. Supplements, are they worth the hype? Let’s dig into the research to understand if branch chain amino acids truly enhance athletic performance, et cetera, et cetera.
So we can see from this example there is a clear difference between what it spits out for the two different prompts. And so I think that when asked correctly, chat, G B T can be really great in terms of generating examples of things. So we’re not using it as a replacement, we’re using it as a supplement.
I’m looking for examples of X. These are generally things that yeah, we could come up with on our own, but it might take us an incredible amount of time. And so there, there can be a huge time saving component here too, right? It’s giving you this list of ideas, and then from there you can go and put your secret sauce on these ideas and come up with an awesome Instagram post that is tailored towards your audience.
The other really cool thing that chat G p t can do is that we can actually use it to continue to refine a search. So if a search has given us examples of something and it’s not quite what we want, we can continue to build off of that search and ask it to get more specific.
So this is an example of how we used it for. Our nutrition counseling and coaching certificate that we’re working on right now. We asked it to create some goals for us to create a goals list for us to include with one of our lessons. And so we said list 50 nutrition goals that are very basic, simple habits and could be related to almost any health condition.
None of the goals should be weight related. That’s where we started off, and then it gave us that list of goals and we thought, okay, this is pretty good, but there’s some in here that just aren’t really fitting. And so then we changed the prompt to list 50 nutrition goals that are very basic, simple habits and could be related to almost any health condition.
None of the goals should be weight related. The goals should be positive. They should be about adding something healthy to the lifestyle rather than negative i e limiting something or avoiding something. So then it spit out a new list for us. Some of those lists, some of the items that met the specs were the same between the two different prompts, but then the ones that didn’t meet the prompt specs were changed.
And honestly, I, I think that this is a good example. I think we could have even crafted this better. I think the very basic simple habits is still a little bit vague, this was a good learning experience for us. And then what we did is we asked to refine it further and we said, rewrite this list, but don’t include specific vitamins and minerals.
’cause there was a couple of goals that were related to things like vitamin E or vitamin C or whatever. And we were like, those just don’t make sense in this list. So we asked it to eliminate all of those. So anyways, you can see an example of you can actually continue to ask at things in order to get exactly what you want.
You can continue to get it to refine, refine, refine until it gives you what you want. Now another thing that I believe chat G B T can do really well and I think this truly is a game changer when it comes to. Dietetic practice and nutrition care is clarifying and summarizing. Information, particularly scientific research.
We have all been there as practitioners where we’re reading through an abstract on a scientific study and we’re thinking, what in the world does this mean? I don’t understand what these authors are trying to tell me. And so one of the really cool things that you can do is you can copy an abstract from a paper and you can paste it into chat G p T, and you can say, I’m having trouble understanding this.
I need you to clarify and summarize the key messages of this research study. And it will do that for you, which is pretty awesome that, you, you can’t argue with that as a benefit, helping us be able to understand scientific research better. That’s pretty awesome. And so ultimately, in terms of what I feel like it can do well, just to summarize all of those points, we’re using it as a supplement.
We’re not using it as a replacement.
That’s actually a really good segue into what I believe that I believe it can’t do well. And so starting off with this, along this same note of generating large pieces of original content I believe if we’re using it as a tool to think for us and to override our professional expertise, we’re using it in the wrong way and we’re gonna see a lot of people.
Attempting to use it in that way. And I believe it’s going to be very clear. And if you have just, if you’ve experimented and I think you should experiment with asking Chat g p t to write you a blog post on a specific topic, you’re gonna see some serious issues with it. And For example, when I asked it that generic prompt of write me a blog post on prenatal nutrition, some of the biggest issues that I saw right off the bat.
Number one, the content is not referenced. This is a huge problem, right? It’s a huge problem. It’s not. Necessarily up to date. And so the information retrieved from Chad G P T at this point goes up to 2021, and so there’s two years of a gap there. And yes, they will probably be running a new update where it will gather data from the last two years, but at this point goes up to data from 2021.
So there’s two years potentially there where you’re missing data. It is vague, it was generic, it was very robotic as well. , and then the other question that’s been thrown around, and I don’t think anybody actually knows the answer to this, is whether AI generated content is being recognized the same way as organic content in Google.
And so to think, and I, again, I. I do believe that this is happening, that there’s probably, content farms out there that are just using chat g p T to generate hundreds and hundreds of generic, vague robotic nutrition blog posts or health related blog posts. That’s not how you do it.
And so again, I’m gonna come back to the referencing thing because again, that’s my, one of my biggest qualms with this piece. But, to this on its head a little bit and say, okay how could this be helpful a practitioner and I’m like, I need to write a blog post.
There’s so much that feels like it goes into it. I’m really overwhelmed. I don’t know how to. Start, I don’t know what information to include. It’s taking me a long time to even get this started because I feel so overwhelmed by it. Okay. We could actually use it to really help our process and we could do it in a really effective way.
One of those ways could be asking it to actually write you an outline. So you could give it the prompt of, write me a bullet point outline for a 500 word blog post, teaching a first time mom about the five most important things they should consider when it comes to prenatal nutrition. The content should be written for someone who is at a grade eight or lower reading level.
That is a completely different prompt, and I, as the practitioner know exactly what I want it to do, and I am telling it to do exactly that. You are still the brain behind this, and I think that’s the biggest difference between the two examples, the write me a prenatal blog post and the write this example of writing me the outline is that you’re still the brain behind it.
You’re indicating exactly what you’re, you want. You are actually writing this blog post, so this is just an outline. You still have to go and you have to actually write it. You can add the language that is most appropriate for your target audience. You can add examples that are things you’ve been asked.
In practice, you can teach the material as you would teach it to your clientele. You can reference your information appropriately, which by the way is essential for s e o. We can’t have unreferenced content. You can add your own personality and your own unique twist to it so it doesn’t sound generic and boring.
But at the end of the day, we’ve used chat G P T to help us take the overwhelm out of that outline piece and give us a clear direction forward. But we’re not asking it to be the brain behind this blog post. The other thing you could do is you could actually get it to check your blog post afterwards for grammar and readability to make sure that it’s more accessible and more readable to your target
So one of the things that I want to address and talk about for a second is just this piece around legalities and what I’ve learned with regards to copyright. Because if you’re anything like me, probably one of your first questions was, but wait, how does this all work with regards to the idea of plagiarism?
As someone, as anyone, with many years of formal academic training in post-secondary, and for me as someone who owns a content platform, I. Where we teach nutrition practitioners, we are always thinking about proper referencing. It’s literally something we talk about every single day. And so we ask the question what is the deal with plagiarism and with AI tools?
And so one of the things that was really interesting is I attended, through that virtual conference I was talking about, I attended a really great session on copyright. I’m not a lawyer. At all. I’m not a lawyer. This is purely my interpretation of the gist of this session and the lawyer who presented was very clear that the legal landscape is changing constantly.
And so this is something that you need to stay on top of yourself. Don’t just rely on my interpretation of what she was saying. But what was really interesting, and again, I might not have the right language here but what she was saying is that currently copyright protection is only granted on content created by humans.
So technically content you generate from something like Chad, g b t is not plagiarized, however, My question to that is and the thing that I’m not clear on, and this is again why I believe that the human element, the. Us as professionals element can’t be removed from this process is because we know that when it comes to referencing, there’s a rule of thumb that if something is common knowledge, so like strawberries contain vitamin C, we’re not, we don’t need to reference that, right?
That’s common knowledge, but if it’s an idea we do need to reference that back to the original source or if we are wanting to source back to a study in order to enhance the validity of what we’re saying. So for example, in our blog post idea, if we’re wanting to say, studies suggest that folate X, Y, z, we wanna link back to those studies.
’cause that’s really important to. To ensure that we’re enhancing the validity of what we’re saying. There’s credibility behind what we’re saying. There’s science behind what we’re saying. Chat G p T could very well generate content for you that say, that says, Studies say that X, but it’s not gonna provide you with those references.
It’s not gonna provide you with the original sources for this, those studies. So you still need to take the step of finding those studies and referencing back to the original source. So all this to say, Again, just to restate what I’ve said earlier in this episode, it’s so much smarter to utilize tools like Chat G B T to enhance your original work to help you simplify components of your workflow flow or your creative.
Process, but not necessarily intended to replace or to be the brain behind what you’re doing. There’s still a very important role for you and your academic training and your professional training, and I hope that’s become very clear throughout all of these examples and Overall, just to summarize, what we use it for, what we don’t use it for, and I’m gonna share again, a couple more examples, what we use it for.
Like I said, helping us come up with examples to support our original content. Give me five examples of this, but again, remember, we have to be super specific in terms of the types of examples that we’re looking for. Who’s the intended audience? Who is asking the question, et cetera. Using it to help us piece together sentence structure for a very specific ask.
This is one. One example of this we were, looking to explain the lock and key analogy for diabetes and trying to think of the most clear, concise way to explain that so we could ask chat g p t to help us simplify that analogy into, Some key into, two to three key sentences that could be something that we would use it for.
Helping us summarize and clarify information for our own learning. Taking that abstract and copy and pasting it, helping us transcribe and edit our content. So we use a platform called, Script. I had mentioned this at the beginning. I’m actually recording this podcast episode on Descrip right now, and it uses AI to give me suggestions for things I should edit out of the podcast episode.
Things like repeat words, ums, uhs, those sorts of things. It also transcribes based on my voice recording. Helping us make our content more accessible and more readable. Simplify this paragraph. And then helping us outline content in a clear way. Helping us come up with that bullet point outline for what we could talk about related to X topic.
But we don’t use it for generating original content, so we’re not using it to create nutrition content to create blog content for us. All of our handouts, our evidence summaries, our blog posts are very much still written by us due to all of the rationale that I’ve talked about in this episode. Again, we may use it to supplement, to help us supplement, but it’s absolutely not replacing our secret sauce.
The other funny thing that I’ve tried, which you know I, and I don’t know, I think maybe it might. Help to dive a little bit deeper and get a little bit more experience in generating prompts for this area was, but I was thinking about helping it, getting it to help me write email, marketing emails for online course blueprint or just marketing emails in general.
But I’ve started with online course blueprint ’cause I want to get in the habit of sending out more regular emails for that program. And I asked it to, I asked it to write me a, just to experiment, just to see what it would give me to write me a marketing email for online course blueprint. And I included some additional, specifics within that.
But it was so cheesy. It was. So cheesy, I could not use it. So I don’t actually know what the right prompt is to ask it to deify the content that it gives me to make it less salesy. I think, maybe there’s a way that I could phrase it so that it’s like, include marketing messaging, but don’t be too pushy.
I don’t really know. It was just really cheesy. And I read through it and I was like, this does not sound like me at all. This is not my tone. This is not how I would write. It’s very clear this is not me. So anyways, that’s still something that I’m, exploring, but I’m not actively using it for email marketing.
Alright, so that is it for me. I hope that this was interesting for you. It’s been really fun to learn more about this area, to dive into this area a little bit and to just see all of the incredible ways that this can, tools like this can supplement our practice, our businesses. Our ways of working, our processes, et cetera, et cetera.
And so I hope that you enjoyed this episode and make sure and stay tuned, because we will be launching a wait list for the counseling and coaching certificate that’s coming this fall. So stay tuned for information on that. If you’re not on our email list, you’ll wanna make sure that you’re on our email list.
So just go on over to dietitian Success. center.com and click the freebie tab and then download any one of our freebies. We have three there right now, and you’ll be added to our email list when you download our freebie. So there’s some great free content there. Anyways, if you haven’t taken advantage of any of those freebies yet, make sure to do it.
Otherwise, have an awesome week and I will see you next Thursday.
