News Newegg's ChatGPT Plugin Helps You Plan a PC Build

It'd be interesting if they used statistical models, based on actual benchmarks of different games & settings, to present you with optimal perf/$ options for whatever price point you specify. That would be way simpler than ChatGPT and would probably work a lot better.

The real problem that needs solving is component-matching. So, finding the most cost-effective CPU for a given GPU, and then the most cost-effective cooler and memory for that CPU.
 
"Newegg provides ChatGPT plugin to customers"... which requires a monthly subscription to ChatGPT Plus that costs as much as a Netflix premium account.

This tool is garbage for anyone building a PC who cannot answer their own questions about compatibility and performance when mixing components and hardware. Let's have a moment of silence for the lost hours and money when they attempt to build these. If those new to the world of DIY PC building use this as a shortcut to speed up education/experience Newegg will be contributing to the cost of their journey. Returns may be a hidden cost of this form of automated shopping assistant. Not sure how many without a $20/month GPT Plus subscription will start paying for that to access this.
 
That's probably what Newegg is accessing through ChatGPT, though: the benchmarks and expert reviews from websites such as Tom's. Unless Newegg does their own in-house testing, of course. But they don't, and most other ways to access that data would likely cost much more than an API integration and whatever they pay OpenAI.
Instead of relying on ChatGPT to have read and faithfully remember all such details, it would work better to build an explicit PC performance model over a set of core components and workloads.

This creates an interesting world, where Newegg is hoping customers access that information within ChatGPT.
I think Newegg is mostly doing it for publicity, by jumping on the hype bandwagon. Maybe they're also hoping it would entice a few people to try building their first PC. Perhaps students, many of whom I'm told use ChatGPT to help with their schoolwork, have more trust in it than we do, and could be reassured if given the benefit of its advice.
 
Perhaps students, many of whom I'm told use ChatGPT to help with their schoolwork, have more trust in it than we do, and could be reassured if given the benefit of its advice.
We have an intern in the office who is all in with ChatGPT.

Even when we show him the absolutely incorrect responses it often spits out...."Well, you're just not using it right!"
 
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You might both have a point. Did you ever challenge him to show you "how to use it right"?
Oh absolutely.

But....it is (per my mandate) totally banned for use in our dev team.

His point is that you have to go through a whole iterative process...ask, get the response, feed the error back in, get an error, and on and on.
-Make me a website to do X-

Then, I pointed him at the really large flowchart on the really big whiteboard, and said "OK...make that."

"But but...I don't understand that...🙁"

"Exactly dude. You have to understand what this application, or even just the small part of it on that whiteboard, is supposed to do, at a very detailed level. (and you've sat in on ALL the design meetings so far)
You also have to internalize the maintenance aspect 5 years from now, when you're long gone. The 'code' is a small part of the whole process."


ChatGPT makes crappy code, and crappier developers.
If you rely on that tool, you'll never understand how all the parts interact. From the users fingers to the backend database.
 
And for our little intern, he is taking a biology class.
And WILL use ChatGPT.

"So dude...you're going to rely on this thing to basically write your papers, and you take credit."
'Yep'
"So then you don't really learn anything, except how to manipulate the CHatGPT tool, and nothing about biology. Gotcha."