Using MindMeister with ChatGPT

Andrew Lapidus

If you've spent any time on the internet the last few months, you know that everyone's talking about ChatGPT, the groundbreaking AI chatbot and language model from OpenAI.

Personally, I've been super fascinated with the tool ever since it launched at the end of November last year, especially its ability to so quickly generate such detailed and articulate responses to complicated questions.

I don't know if I've ever felt so aware of the impending "age of AI" that so many have predicted! 🤖

Yesterday, I got the idea to try and use ChatGPT to generate mind maps on various subjects, and was completely floored by its potential. With just a few clicks (and adding an image 😀), I was able to generate this mind map about the causes of the French Revolution:

Here's how I did it:

Step One:

I instructed ChatGPT to formulate its answer to my question in an outline that could be read by MindMeister. I entered the following prompt:

What were the major economic situations and events which caused the French Revolution?Please formulate your answer as an outline, use as many details as possible. The outline should have as many topics and subtopics as necessary to explain the answer and should use the following format:Outline TitleFirst TopicSubtopic 1DetailsMore DetailsSubtopic 2DetailsMore DetailsSubtopic 3DetailsMore DetailsSecond TopicSubtopic 1DetailsMore DetailsSubtopic 2DetailsMore DetailsSubtopic 3DetailsMore DetailsThird TopicSubtopic 1DetailsMore DetailsSubtopic 2DetailsMore DetailsSubtopic 3DetailsMore Details

Step 2: Copy/Paste into Outline Mode

I then received an answer in Chat GPT, which I copy/pasted into MindMeister's Outline Mode.

And here the paste:

Step 3: Format hierarchies with Tab and Shift+Tab (if necessary)

I did need to do some reformatting of the topics, using Tab to indicate each line's hierarchy: (You can also use shift + tab to move down a hierarchical level)

Step 4: Check out your mind map!

After the reformatting, I added an image and theme and found myself looking at a beautiful mind map which provided much more overview than a simple piece of text!

****

Of course, this is just a first attempt at experimenting with Meister tools and ChatGPT (or any other AI tool, for that matter), but it seems so clear that AI will be a huge player in our future, and I'd be very interested in other users' experiences with Meister tools and any other AI solutions! Let me know what you think in the comments 😊

Best,

Andrew

Rooster McNugget

Hi @Andrew Lapidus ,

thank you so much for this great post!

I heard about this chatGPT in early January. However, haven't tried it out myself yet. 

However, my wife is already using the AI partially in the company where she works. As you said, the AI is amazingly good and very fast. It saves them a lot of time at work. 

Personally, I'm a big fan of automations and the AI that goes with them. Especially in technology.

However, I'm still not so sure about this ChatGPT. Generally with AI that basically takes simple things off our hands like writing a short post. I don't know if that's a good thing if we don't have to think about what and how to write anymore. Isn't the personal touch missing somehow?

And I always found it exciting to gather information about a certain topic myself. Even if it takes much longer. Because even when researching, you always learn something new.

But I have to admit, for students who have to do a lot of research, it's definitely helpful and you can get more done in less time.

But as I said, that's my personal opinion.

Best, Samuel

Joerg Koper

Man...you got me thrilled with this post 😅

That is exactly the kind of topics I love. Thanks for showing and explaining your steps. So inspirational, @Andrew Lapidus

...and I think, this will be my playground within the next few days 💪😎

I see...many people love to test the machine 😂

Best, Jörg

Miša Hennin

@Tatiana Torres you might be interested in this!

Best,

Andrew Lapidus

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/2268#Comment_2268

Definitely right there with you on the concern, Samuel. Sometimes the power of ChatGPT makes me feel a bit more than uncomfortable, especially when some users begin to speak of it as a "replacement" for human-generated content.

While I imagine the availability of these tools will mean a pretty major transition in education, I'm personally not worried about AI removing the human element in content creation/writing. I believe that such tools will come to be seen the same way we now see powerful apps like "Excel:" Spreadsheets do save us from needing to perform hundreds of complicated mathematical calculations, but the very use of this tool still demands the knowledge of "experts" who can actually turn the tool into a beneficial use.

I wonder if ChatGPT will mean a similar transition: it may allow us to quickly generate many sentences on a specific topic, it does not replace the editing function of a human who would need to add a meaningful human voice to the piece of written text.

Maybe that's just my optimism! Would be interesting to know your wife's professional experience with the tool!

Andrew Lapidus

Wanted to add another point that I recently discussed with a MindMeister developer, since AI is such a hot topic around tech companies like Meister.

A potential future use of MindMeister and AI language models like GPT would be to create an "AI Co-Pilot" within the MM UX: Imagine the ability to generate not only individual topic suggestions for your map, but also to quickly generate extremely complex multi-level and intelligently organized maps after only a single topic suggestion!

For now, it's only an experiment our devs investigated during innovation week, but the potential here is obviously huge!

Joerg Koper

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/2327#Comment_2327

I absolutely agree with your statement to the use of AI in the future, Andrew. As long as we human beings decide, what...when...how may be published, it's OK to make use of it.

As long as all humans agree with your point of view, all is well....but unfortunately, there are too many sick characters, that may misuse those developments for evil purposes. So, what we need too is a strict regulation.

Best, Jörg

Miša Hennin

Exactly @Jörg Koper - some element (i.e. decision making) should be reserved for the sentient beings!

Andrew Lapidus

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/2546#Comment_2546

☝️ +1

Monk1990

Great idea - happy to try this out!

Admin BSF.company

Thanks for the step-by-step explanation on how to formulate the request and create the mind map from the results @Andrew Lapidus, mind blown 🤯

BTW, I recently read a book published by @Tatiana Torres about the implications of AI in the future of education. It might interest you folks. The copy I purchased was published in Spanish, but maybe she's got an English translation somewhere.

I've also seen acquaintances concerned about students faking expertise through extensive use of AI, and my take is that we should be excited instead of being concerned.

IMHO, expertise can't be faked.

I believe, AI could force improvement in two ways:

• Educators on one hand will have to excel at implementing thoughtful evaluation methods that prove real knowledge of the matter. AI will help them with that challenge; for example, it will be easier to create many evaluation scenarios for a group of students.
• Students will have more resources at their disposal, but a greater demand to prove knowledge if good educators take their job seriously and apply what I described in the previous paragraph.

The same could apply to the professional realm.

Anybody could copy/paste a big deal from AI about their "knowledge" on whatever comes to mind, but they'll just make a fool of themselves the first time it comes to hit the field and put it into practice.

Joerg Koper

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/2753#Comment_2753

For all of you that are interested in the work of @Tatiana Torres, you can find an interesting article on Higher Education Digest. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, @Andres D'Andrea and especially for giving the hint to Tatiana's book 🙂

Best, Jörg

Ps4andPbs

I love Chat GPT and support using it in any ways possible. My only criticism to using it this way is that one of the most important benefits of a Mind Map is actually the process of creating the map, not just having the map.

Using it as an outline or a reference for early on can be very helpful, but at some point you should definitely make your own map from your own knowledge and in a way that fits the structure of how you think about the topic.

Joerg Koper

Hi @Ps4andPbs 👋🙂

I totally agree with you. When a Mind Map is part of a creative process, there is no need to work with AI at all. In that case, it would destroy every individual thinking of a team and even the sense of a project itself.

On the other hand, I'm sure you'll agree that AI complements and supports us wonderfully in creating purely scientific and productive mind maps. Especially when a fast workflow is needed within short time, what very often is given in daily business processes 😉

Best, Jörg

Beneanima

Vielen Dank für diese hilfreiche Auflistung der Schritte

Douglas Boyce

@Andrew Lapidus WELL DONE !!!! And now I have a bunch of ideas to try out to help my students.

Andrew Lapidus

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/3445#Comment_3445

Thanks for the feedback :D Would be very interesting to hear how ChatGPT is affecting your use of mind mapping as an instructor 😀 I've heard some "mixed reviews" from some of our community members involved in education!

garland@captaintime.com

Thank you for such a brilliant example of how AI can be used in this manner. I have used AI to generate ideas, but hadn't thought of formatting it for creating mind maps.

Tatiana Torres

Thank you so much for sharing this, I've been using outline mode and ChatGPT to create MindMaps, which works great! let me know if you need further assistance :)

CL Webb

https://community.meister.co/discussion/759/using-mindmeister-with-chatgpt

Thanks so much @Andrew Lapidus …this will provide a great start in any research or delivery project.

CL Webb

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/2869#Comment_2869

I agree @Joerg Koper & @Ps4andPbs, this should be used just to start/suppliment the research and creative process, not BE the research and creative process.

Glen Gatin

Thanks for this discussion. I just tried it and it worked well. Richard Bryne recommended an application call Whimsical where you can populate a mindmap directly from ChatGPT. Slick as heck and I hope Mindmeister incorporates something similar soon. Kind of like the MagicWand function I would bet.

Beata Mertyn

o wow! I am really astonished that chatGPT can be used to help in creating the content of mind map. It could help us and Mindmeister users to fasten our job

Andrew Lapidus

Super glad to hear about your positive experience, @Merbe!

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/3956#Comment_3956

Also completely agree @GGatin — since GPT 4 came out a few weeks ago, it's becoming clearer by the day that close integration with aritificial intelligence is "here to stay" and will become more and more routine and important in our work and professional lives.

Our MM Devs are currently testing an "AI Co-Pilot" integrated directly into MindMeister's UX — no update yet on a public release, but it's absolutely some exciting stuff!

Glen Gatin

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/2532#Comment_2532

If you are looking for beta testers for a MM AI integration pick me. I have a class of 25 Education students at the moment and they need to get out ahead of this.

Andrew Lapidus

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/4151#Comment_4151

Great to hear! I can't guarantee that our product team will enable beta testing or early access to this feature, as at the moment it is purely experimental — but you and your team will be the first to know about any such opportunity 👍

(Also, any other interested folks can react to this comment 😀)

Admin BSF.company

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/4164#Comment_4164

It's so cool to know that Meister is considering getting officially on the AI bandwagon with a ChatGPT integration. Thanks for sharing that tip @Andrew Lapidus 👍

I'm looking forward to beta-test those features as well when they are available.

Best regards.

Andres

Joerg Koper

Wow, this conversation is definitely turning into my cup of tea 😊

If any assistance for testing the new ChatGPT features is needed…

…I'm here 😎

Best, Jörg

Tatiana Torres

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/4164#Comment_4164

I'm in for the beta testers group too

Channing Kelly

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/2268#Comment_2268

@Rooster McNugget I agree with you. I can ask for information, but how do I know it's accurate? That's my largest concern. There's no sourcing or documentation. So how do validate or document the information that is provided? And then, as AI generated content populates the web more and more, how do you avoid have what may be inaccurate information — presented well — becoming perceived as reliable source? Of course the latter issue has been a problem absent AI, but seems it could get worse.

Miša Hennin

@Channing Kelly I really agree with you on this. Tools like ChatGPT appear so advanced that it's easy to blindly accept everything we're told.

I'm glad I finished school before this era of AI began! I find it hard to imagine how schools and universities are going to keep any control over this…