Now retired from Proposal Land, I have hesitated to advise folks on how to deal with all this new-fangled technology since I have no first-hand experience with it. But here’s a great piece on how to use ChatGPT to expedite/improve scientific writing from someone who does have that experience, albeit in a different context.
The correlations with proposal writing are obvious. There are three good applications:
- To create a first draft from bullets and an outline that you wrote
- To polish a draft you wrote (copy-editing the grammar and syntax [word order])
- To suggest ways to shorten or re-order a passage or make it less awkward
That sounds a lot like some of the elements of proposal editing. Maybe ChatGPT can free editors to focus more on adding marketing value.
So: never use ChatGPT to generate content.
Don’t ask it for information; the results are meaningless, even if it purports to back up its claims with citations.
Using ChatGPT to generate content is like using a watermelon to do a jigsaw puzzle.
It’s not even a poor tool for that – it isn’t a tool for that at all.