In Module 9, I was really interested in exploring the resources about ChatGPT. Up to this point, I have been someone who is fairly opposed to generative AI, and up until a few months ago, I had hardly used it at all—once with help on a letter of recommendation, and once to help me come up with a structure for a Maid of Honor speech. However, in the past few weeks, I’ve caved to the pressure and I started using it for small, technical tasks that are difficult to research.
Last month, I used it for assistance with writing and editing some formulas for a Google Sheets spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is a non-work related one; inspired by some of my coworkers’ own spreadsheets, I created a personal reading log where I track author demographics, book lengths, target audience, content, and more for every book I read. At the end of the year, I hope to look back at the data and create some nerdy little charts for myself, as well as creating an archive of data that I can compare future years against.
Anyway, in this spreadsheet, I pull my raw reading data into a chart which compares genres, page lengths, etc. and synthesizes it into percentages and averages. I’m not super experienced in Excel, so I knew writing some of these formulas would require some experimenting. However, it can be difficult to troubleshoot Google Sheets formulas or to problem solve, because many issues are very specific to your own dataset.
This is where ChatGPT came in. When I asked it to proofread my formulas and suggest better ones, I found it was fairly capable at synthesizing the existing internet resources about Google Sheets into advice tailored to my specific problems and needs. It helped me to understand what I was doing wrong. In a way, it felt like asking a teacher a question and getting a personalized answer, rather than trying to squeeze relevant information out of a forum post from 2017 like I was doing before.
After this success, I started using it for help in my other class, which is on metadata and cataloguing. Again, it’s been extremely useful—not because it does my homework for me, which is what I previously assumed it was doing for other people, but because it gives me “someone” to ask specific questions to on specific use cases for specific metadata schemas. Especially for something as technical as metadata schemas, it can be very hard to find user-friendly assistance on the web. ChatGPT has successfully been able to transform the internet’s technical cataloguing resources into quick Q&A help when I’m in the flow of an assignment.
In an interview with SJSU NewsCenter, Tom Moriarity (fairly boldly) claims that he is not worried about ChatGPT, and that he believes that it can assist with minor problem-solving while creative, generative processes like writing remain the domain of individual human beings (Jackson, 2023). While there are certainly problems with this model, I am starting to see how it might be a fair assessment, or at least an aspiration. I still have a lot of reservations about the service—it has widespread and blatant copyright infringement concerns, as well as truly staggering environmental impacts—but I now think these aren’t the only notable things about the product. Inside Higher Ed situates concerns about ChatGPT within the history of general technological handwringing, which is a helpful perspective (Fister and Head, 2023).
Bonus: A screenshot of my last few months of reading in the spreadsheet! Click the link to explore more…
References
Jackson, J. H. (2023, February 14). Chatting with ChatGPT: Deep Dive in Five with Tom Moriarty. SJSU NewsCenter. https://blogs.sjsu.edu/newsroom/2023/chatting-with-chat-gpt-deep-dive-in-five-with-tom-moriarty/
Fister, B., and Head, A. J. (2023, May 4). Getting a grip on Chat
GPT. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2023/05/04/chatgpt-reshaping-information-infrastructures-opinion
3 Comments
July 25, 2025 at 4:22 pm
Thank you so much for this assessment of ChatGPT. I am right there with you, I haven’t used it much, and I’m generally wary of technology that seems to be touching everything but without giving the public time or a say to think about what it means for us. I have felt that its general rollout has been something like: it’s here, deal with it. That being said, I did have to engage with it for a class of mine (The History of Books, with Dr. Main), and, like you mentioned, it wasn’t as icky as I thought it would be (mostly because it got some of my questions wrong and I could still feel mentally and morally superior to it).
I find it really interesting that you came away with the feeling that it could act as a tutor. You’re right–web searching for user-friendly information about certain things is a grind, and I can absolutely see how ChatGPT could alleviate some of those issues.
Cheers! Mei
July 26, 2025 at 5:09 pm
Hi Carly,
I enjoyed reading your post – your reading log is really neat! I’ve been using Storygraph for a reading log, but after looking at your spreadsheet and seeing all the possibilities for different reading data, I can see myself adopting a similar system someday…
I agree with your reservations concerning AI, and I really like your assessment of ChatGPT as “’someone’ to ask specific questions to” with regard to a technical task. I think this is where it makes the most sense to incorporate these tools into our lives; as a technical assistant or consultant, not as a ghostwriter or an all-knowing information source.
I know I could certainly use the help when it comes to spreadsheet formulas 😅
July 28, 2025 at 8:11 pm
@carlygove I am so glad you shared this process and your experience with AI. It’s so good to experiment to better understand what is possible and what might be potentially a problem. Your spreadsheet is super cool.