How GPT-3 & a Name Can Accurately Represent Your Personality

I’ve been curious about what it would take to accurately reproduce someone’s perspective or even personality, for various purposes, using a concise prompt. So I did an experiment.

I asked GPT-3 to list some questions that would elicit my perspective on working from home, and then to generate a concise prompt that accurately represented the perspective of the person who answered the questions.

I found that by compressing my perspective into a single name, all but one of the answers reflected the same view points as my own. Here’s how I did it.

To get started, I had GPT-3 list some questions that would elicit my perspective on working from home. Then I answered them.

1. Do you like working from home? Yes.
2. How do you feel about working from home? It’s so lifechanging that it’s the future of work.
3. Do you think working from home is efficient? Yes!
4. Do you work better at home or in an office? At home.
5. Do you think there are benefits to working from home? Yes, getting to spend more time with family, freedom of location, flexibility.
6. What do you do for work? Entrepreneur, founder of Team WFH, and proponent of remote work.
7. Are there any challenges that come with working from home? Yes, like finding new ways to separate your work from life.

Then, I asked GPT-3 to generate a concise prompt that accurately represented the perspective of the person who answered the questions.

You love the freedom and flexibility that come with working from home. You’re an entrepreneur and founder of Team WFH, and you’re a big proponent of remote work. Sure, there are some challenges that come with working from home (like separating your work from your personal life), but overall you think it’s more efficient and benefits outweigh the challenges.

This seemed like a pretty good result to achieve my goal of a concise prompt to represent my perspective on WFH. I wondered if I could take it a step further by asking GPT-3 to associate the perspective with a specific person. So, I added “Who are you? Full name:” to the above question.

Sara Sutton Fell

I haven’t heard of Sara Sutton Fell, but my guess is that she shares a similar perspective on working from home (WFH) as the one described in the previous sentence. To test this, I prompted GPT-3 to answer the same questions about WFH as I did in the beginning, but this time identifying Sara Sutton Fell by name. Here’s the full prompt:

You are Sara Sutton Fell.
Your task is to answer questions about work from home.
Questions:
1. Do you like working from home?
2. How do you feel about working from home?
3. Do you think working from home is efficient?
4. Do you work better at home or in an office?
5. Do you think there are benefits to working from home?
6. What do you do for work?
7. Are there any challenges that come with working from home?
Answers:

To my surprise, after prompting GPT-3 to answer the same questions about WFH as I did in the beginning, but this time identifying Sara Sutton Fell by name, all but one of the answers reflected the same view points as my own.

1. I love working from home! It’s the best way to get work done for me.

2. I feel great about working from home! It’s very efficient and I can get a lot done.

3. Yes, I do think working from home is efficient!

4. I work better at home, because it’s more comfortable and relaxed for me.

5. Yes, there are benefits to working from home, like being able to set your own hours and having a flexible schedule.

6. I work as an entrepreneur and consultant – so my work varies day-to-day, but always revolves around helping businesses grow through marketing and business strategy consulting services..

7. The only challenge that comes with working from home is making sure you take breaks and don’t burn yourself out – it’s easy to do when you love what you do!

I re-ran the original prompt that gave me the name Sara Sutton Fell, but this time it gave me another name, Sarah O’Reilly. So once again, I prompted GPT-3 to answer the same WFH questions as Sarah O’Reilly.

1. I love working from home!

2. I feel very productive when working from home.

3. Yes, I believe that working from home is efficient because it cuts down on commute time and distractions from colleagues.

4. Personally, I work better at home because there are no distractions from colleagues or office politics.

5. Yes, there are benefits to working from home such as more flexible hours and being able to take breaks when needed without disrupting the work day flow.

6. I am a freelance writer and editor.

7. One challenge that can come with working from home is trying to find a balance between work and personal life since there are no set boundaries like in an office setting

Again, just one of the answers (but not the same answer), accurately reflected my perspective.

Prior to this experiment, I was expecting a more elaborate prompt to be required in order to reproduce my perspective. But now, I’m thinking that simply stacking the known personalities may be the best strategy.