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A number of recent articles have covered artificial intelligence gone awry: Microsoft’s AI’s strange declarations of love. ChatGPT’s inaccuracies. Midjourney’s odd human portraits with too many fingers and too many teeth. And worse, accusations of plagiarism from both human and AI.

Midjourney is getting crazy powerful—none of these are real photos, and none of the people in them exist. pic.twitter.com/XXV6RUrrAv

— Miles (@mileszim) January 13, 2023

But could ChatGPT in Philanthropy be a Useful Tool for Philanthropic Writing?

Here’s One Way it could: Breaking Writer’s Block

There are certainly a whole host of questions to consider and issues to address when it comes to this newest technological advance. However, there is a useful and ethical way to use the technology for writing purposes, specifically in the philanthropic sector: brainstorming.

You may be familiar with the feeling of blank-page-anxiety. That feeling you get when you have a prompt and a flood of information in your head but no way to funnel that information onto paper. ChatGPT is a powerful tool to bridge that gap.

Step 1: To use the chatbot you’ll need to first make an account on OpenAI. Using ChatGPT is currently free, although there is an option to purchase a Pro account subscription where you get priority access to the chatbot when it’s overloaded with use and unavailable to free use.

Step 2: Get acquainted with the chatbot. It can be a bit daunting at first and you might not know what to ask. The best way to start is with a question or a command. You could ask, for example, what the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation does. Then perhaps command the chatbot to write a paragraph about the efficacy of mosquito nets. Really get into the brainstorming mindset here.

Step 3: Once you have an idea of the functionality, you can start asking the real questions.

Say for instance you’re writing a grant proposal for a program that would increase pollinator habitats in cities and you’re stuck on that first large daunting question: What is the goal of the project/program?

I asked this very question and received a moderately acceptable response.

Not the worst response, but it could use a bit of pathos and a bit more specificity. The situation might also occur where you forgot a key piece of information or the chatbot didn’t give you exactly what you’re looking for.

Step 4: Ask the chatbot to revise. A useful function of ChatGPT is its ability to learn within the current conversation. If the chatbot didn’t answer the question quite the way you wanted, you can tweak the language or ask it for something specific.

In this example, I asked the chatbot to add an example of a city that is designated as a “Bee City” in the paragraph it had generated.

Step 5: Revise. You may notice the AI also uses certain phrases much more commonly than others, making it sound a bit stiff and a bit one-voiced. These traits are generally unappealing in grant applications or website descriptions; both of which are common time-consuming writing tasks in philanthropy. At the end of the day, you can likely write a more specific and targeted response than the chatbot can, with better pathos. The response is just your starting point.

Say I decide that actually, the first response was a better fit for the direction I want to go in. I might revise it to:

Urban development and other human activities have led to a decline in pollinator populations (bees, butterflies, and the like), exacerbating issues of health and wellness. However, by increasing pollinator habitats in cities through our program, “Save the Pollinators,” we can support the health of the entirety of urban and rural ecosystems, human and nature, through the process of acquiring land and developing land into pollinator-friendly green spaces. Pollinators play a crucial role in maintaining the health and productivity of these ecosystems specifically by aiding plant reproduction. In urban ecosystems this means an abundance of flowers and lush green plants which increase the urban beauty, aid in the mental health of residents, and increase overall the temperature regulation of the area. In rural ecosystems, this means stabilized food production of croplands and an aid in the strengthening of the entire ecosystem, from insects to apex predators. In addition to these benefits, increased pollinator habitats can improve air and water quality and reduce soil erosion.

In this new paragraph, I saved those green highlighted lines but shifted everything else to include some more pathos-centric words and specificity as well as more firmly solidifying a problem-solution narrative. For example, using “urban beauty” and “acquiring land and developing that land.” Had I needed to write this paragraph wholly unaided, it may have taken me a good 30 minutes to complete, needing to go through the task of brainstorming and listing and condensing. With the ChatGPT generated response, I finished in 15 minutes flat, cutting my time in half.

Limitations to remember here: the chatbot won’t have any knowledge of something that doesn’t exist yet, or likely personal details of your organization. In fact, at present, it has limited knowledge of events that occurred after 2021 due to its training data ending in that year.

It also has the ability to make incorrect information sound factually plausible. For example, I asked the AI how many countries start with the letter “v.” The first answer, “There is only one country that starts with the letter “V,” and that is Vietnam,” obviously did not cover every country. I tried again: “There are only two countries that start with the letter “V”: 1. Vanuatu 2. Vatican City (officially known as the Holy See).” Venezuela is nowhere to be found. So that information on Bee Cities? Worth a fact-check.