The ScandalsBot below can sum up the plot of The Solomon Scandals and compare it to many classics such as The Great Gatsby or The Jungle. It can also opine on ethics questions and others in journalism, politics, business, healthcare, education, law, and other areas—and do plenty else. But it is an imperfect bot, nothing more. Please read warnings and more tips under the bot form. For a longer answer, specify the desired length in words—not necessarily the count you’ll get. Click on the little trashcan and reload your Web browser to see the starter questions again. The normal knowledge cut-off date is April 2023, but I stocked the bot with fresh facts to help it better compare Seymour Solomon and disgraced crypto trader Sam Bankman-Fried. Problems? Email David H. Rothman. A guide to creating your own bot is here.
ScandalsBot
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Welcome! That's my human's photo, and it's HIS novel, but as a fallible bot, I'll do my best. You can try repeating questions—my answers may differ. Scroll down if you don’t see the box to enter queries. I’ll take maybe 10-15 seconds to answer you. To control costs, I’m limiting questions to several a day per visitor and might scale back from GPT4-Turbo to 3.5-Turbo.
Warnings and more tips
The ScandalsBot can be scarily perceptive. Still, it can hallucinate like many other chatbots, be mama-boosterish, and fall back on bot-ish cliches. The bot’s language and expressed opinions are essentially its own. Contact me, David H. Rothman, author of The Solomon Scandals, for accurate answers to your questions about the novel. Problems? Reach me privately or in the comment area.
Scandals is mostly a D.C. suspense novel in the white-collar noir vein, not The Great Gatsby. But just for fun, you can tell the bot: “Compare Daisy Buchanan and Wendy Blevin, a socialite in Scandals. 500 words.” You can also ask: “Which conventions of naturalism does Scandals respect, and which does it flout?” Or alternatively: “Which conventions of suspense?” And then, yes, you can read Scandals to see how accurate my bot is. You can also try running questions on journalistic ethics past my bot, such as what reporters should do if they fall in love with sources despite those pesky ground rules.
I see today’s bots as just imperfect tools for reporters and editors, adventurous lit critics and reviewers, academics, K-12 teachers, librarians, business analysts, and most other information-related professionals, not replacements. Do not rely on the ScandalsBot for legal, medical, or ethical advice without also consulting with humans.
For lucid analysis of bots and their pros and cons, I recommend Prof. Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI. – David H. Rothman
Image credit: ChatGPT generated the top picture from my brief description.
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Below, I’ll welcome your possible feedback on the ScandalsBot, both good and bad. Let me know when it errs! And if the bot doesn’t answer your questions, post them here so that if possible, I can arrange for replies.
Reminder: Chatbots have their pet flaws. The ScandalsBot excels in countless ways, but in the past it has invented character names or exaggerated the importance of minor characters. It has even dragged in real people mentioned in the nonfictional essay near the end of the book, rather than in the novel itself. I’ve given the ScandalsBot some corrective instructions, but the bot can still stumble. Same for the mama-boastful language.