GPT-4 and trimming expenses
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Red S
May 1, 2023, 4:11:23 AM5/1/23
to Beancount
Came across this thread from a company that's creating ChatGPT plugins related to personal finance, and thought I'd share. I'm not affiliated or associated in any way with this, nor have I even tried this out myself. I merely looked at the twitter thread.
In fact, I would personally strongly recommend against either this product or anything like it that involves handing out your personal info unless the privacy implications are well understood, as are concerns around "hallucination."
I'm merely quite amused by the fact that generative AI is being applied for a case that was one motivation I had in getting into automating my personal finances decades ago (leaky personal expenses), and is actually going beyond that in executing account closures, sending legal letters, conducting negotiations, and such.
Excerpts:
I decided to outsource my entire personal financial life to GPT-4 (via the
@donotpay chat we are building).I gave AutoGPT access to my bank, financial statements, credit report, and email.
Here’s how it’s going so far (+$217.85) and the strange ways it’s saving money. (1/n):
First, using a DoNotPay
@Plaid connection, I had it login to every bank account and credit card that I own and scan 10,000+ transactions.
It found $80.86 leaving my account every month in useless subscriptions and offered to cancel every single one.
The bots got to work mailing letters in the case of gyms (using the USPS Lob API), chatting automatically with agents and even clicking online buttons to get them cancelled.
Example of how it works below.
Now that the easy savings were out the way, I wanted it to go deeper.
Daniele Nicolodi
May 1, 2023, 8:28:21 AM5/1/23
to bean...@googlegroups.com
On 01/05/23 10:11, Red S wrote:
> Came across this thread from a company <https://twitter.com/donotpay>
> It found $80.86 leaving my account every month in useless subscriptions
> and offered to cancel every single one.
> The bots got to work mailing letters in the case of gyms (using the USPS
> Lob API), chatting automatically with agents and even clicking online
> buttons to get them cancelled.
> Example of how it works below.
> Now that the easy savings were out the way, I wanted it to go deeper.
Leaving aside the fact that this reads like "enhanced" storytelling for
the promotion of a product and the many other issues I have with the
thing, I really would like to know how this guy is able to have so many
gym subscriptions that he lost count of them for a total of less than
$80.86 a month.
Cheers,
Dan
> Came across this thread from a company <https://twitter.com/donotpay>
> that's creating ChatGPT plugins related to personal finance, and thought
> I'd share. I'm not affiliated or associated in any way with this, nor
> have I even tried this out myself. I merely looked at the twitter thread
> <https://twitter.com/jbrowder1/status/1652387444904583169>.
> I'd share. I'm not affiliated or associated in any way with this, nor
> have I even tried this out myself. I merely looked at the twitter thread
> It found $80.86 leaving my account every month in useless subscriptions
> and offered to cancel every single one.
> The bots got to work mailing letters in the case of gyms (using the USPS
> Lob API), chatting automatically with agents and even clicking online
> buttons to get them cancelled.
> Example of how it works below.
> Now that the easy savings were out the way, I wanted it to go deeper.
the promotion of a product and the many other issues I have with the
thing, I really would like to know how this guy is able to have so many
gym subscriptions that he lost count of them for a total of less than
$80.86 a month.
Cheers,
Dan
Red S
May 4, 2023, 11:18:45 PM5/4/23
to Beancount
Some more tidbits I found interesting:
When I said: “no,” it immediately drafted a persuasive and firm legal letter to United, requesting a refund. The letter was both legalistic (citing FTC statutes) and convincing.
difference between GPT-3 and 4 in negotiating bills.
We sent a GPT-4 bot to chat with Comcast and get a refund.
When Comcast offered $50, GPT-4 said: “NO. That is not enough. I want $100.” It worked!
GPT-3 never pushed back as hard.
We sent a GPT-4 bot to chat with Comcast and get a refund.
When Comcast offered $50, GPT-4 said: “NO. That is not enough. I want $100.” It worked!
GPT-3 never pushed back as hard.
And unrelated to the above, here's a website that's well known in personal finance/investments circles, which experimented with chatGPT on issues around personal finance and investing.
Sending these to this list since I assume a lot of us have made somewhat a hobby out of personal finance, and you might be interested in knowing the state of the art in how generative AI is starting to be applied to this area.
Martin Blais
May 4, 2023, 11:34:00 PM5/4/23
to bean...@googlegroups.com
On Thu, May 4, 2023 at 11:18 PM Red S <redst...@gmail.com> wrote:
Sending these to this list since I assume a lot of us have made somewhat a hobby out of personal finance, and you might be interested in knowing the state of the art in how generative AI is starting to be applied to this area.
At this stage I think it's pretty safe to assume everything will get initiated with a starting point of some GPT4 output.
- Non-technical people are using it profusely already, since it doesn't require programming
- Even technical people are using it, since it's amazingly easy to go from nothing to "something okay" in zero time
It's all over the place already. It's a bit scary even. I've been floored at GPT's performance. I've never seen anything this amazing.
Red S
May 5, 2023, 1:02:56 AM5/5/23
to Beancount
At this stage I think it's pretty safe to assume everything will get initiated with a starting point of some GPT4 output.
True. What I find equal parts amazing and scary, is how quickly the GPT4 has been hooked up to get all the way from the starting point to the *end* point. Technically, this (the physical actions) should be the least surprising and the oldest part. But it's the power of the combination that's amazing (and quite scary).
As an example, Lob is apparently a web API service one can invoke to get a physical letter to be printed and mailed to a given address, that the thread I posted above uses. But hooking GPT up to this suddenly means it can send letters of all sorts to anyone in the world. Meaning, it can cause physical actions to be taken in the real world with minimal effort and expertise. One doesn't have to be very imaginative to figure out what this means with the tons of APIs for all kinds of things on the planet.
fin
May 5, 2023, 8:15:29 AM5/5/23
to bean...@googlegroups.com
Red S wrote:
...
fin
...
> But hooking GPT up to this suddenly means it can send letters of all sorts
> to anyone in the world. Meaning, it can cause physical actions to be taken
> in the real world with minimal effort and expertise. One doesn't have to be
> very imaginative to figure out what this means with the tons of APIs for
> all kinds of things on the planet.
oh great even more junk mail! yick...
> to anyone in the world. Meaning, it can cause physical actions to be taken
> in the real world with minimal effort and expertise. One doesn't have to be
> very imaginative to figure out what this means with the tons of APIs for
> all kinds of things on the planet.
fin
Martin Blais
May 6, 2023, 9:57:55 AM5/6/23
to bean...@googlegroups.com
I'm more worried about having to read and review code output from GPT that users with too little understanding of it will produce.
Maybe this is the future...
- In the past, people used to understand assembly code, though they did C
- then they only knew Java
- and then it was Ruby and Python
- and next... well, maybe the whole of programming is going to become a paint-by-color exercise.
fin
May 7, 2023, 2:53:54 PM5/7/23
to bean...@googlegroups.com
Martin Blais wrote:
> fin wrote:
...
ways will be the replacement for much of what people
consider coding. at the simple levels that might be ok.
yet without formal analysis though they're going to
run into problems, but that is where someone with the
deeper knowledge of algorithms and complexity analysis
will make the big bucks fixing such messes.
in the end how are any of these progams going to be
smart enough to know they're dealing with a complex
mess vs. a more simple one? i think that ends up
being similar to knowing when you've run up against a
halting problem question or not and that will likely
take a human level amount of intelligence to figure
out.
fin
> fin wrote:
...
>> oh great even more junk mail! yick...
>
>
> I'm more worried about having to read and review code output from GPT that
> users with too little understanding of it will produce.
>
> Maybe this is the future...
> - In the past, people used to understand assembly code, though they did C
> - then they only knew Java
> - and then it was Ruby and Python
> - and next... well, maybe the whole of programming is going to become a
> paint-by-color exercise.
i think the ability to test and iterate in meaningful
>
>
> I'm more worried about having to read and review code output from GPT that
> users with too little understanding of it will produce.
>
> Maybe this is the future...
> - In the past, people used to understand assembly code, though they did C
> - then they only knew Java
> - and then it was Ruby and Python
> - and next... well, maybe the whole of programming is going to become a
> paint-by-color exercise.
ways will be the replacement for much of what people
consider coding. at the simple levels that might be ok.
yet without formal analysis though they're going to
run into problems, but that is where someone with the
deeper knowledge of algorithms and complexity analysis
will make the big bucks fixing such messes.
in the end how are any of these progams going to be
smart enough to know they're dealing with a complex
mess vs. a more simple one? i think that ends up
being similar to knowing when you've run up against a
halting problem question or not and that will likely
take a human level amount of intelligence to figure
out.
fin
eug...@plamadeala.com
May 8, 2023, 2:52:50 PM5/8/23
to Beancount
On Saturday, May 6, 2023 at 6:57:55 AM UTC-7 bl...@furius.ca wrote:
Maybe this is the future...- In the past, people used to understand assembly code, though they did C- then they only knew Java- and then it was Ruby and Python- and next... well, maybe the whole of programming is going to become a paint-by-color exercise.
"The hottest new programming language is English" @karpathy
Since speech is the form of expression with the highest bitrate currently widely used by all of us, I would guess programming will stop at natural language input through speech. At least until brain-machine interfaces can help us express complex ideas faster than describing them with words.
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