ChatGPT friend or foe

I remember being in high school and teachers giving us homework that was pretty intense. When I attended high school (1976-1980) we never had the internet to do research, we never had the modern convenience that kids do today. No, I had to use encyclopedias or go to the library either at school or the local library. We had schoolbooks that we could turn to for help in writing out any essays or projects that we were given. Heck, my mom who loved to consider herself a modern thinker didn't get her first computer until I was out of high school for maybe three years later. It was this monster machine that took up 90% of her desk and if I remember correctly, there was this annoying dial-up that either connected and you were charged by the minute for being on the computer or the dial tone would throw out a voice that said, "I'm sorry your connection failed. Please try again." With each attempt to reconnect, that person was charged for each attempt.

I asked my mom once if I could use her monster computer for homework and she gave me a time limit of 20 minutes to do my homework, do my research, and don't even get me started about printing anything. My mom would go into a full-blown panic attack if I was on that monster for 21-minutes yelling to remind me that she is being charged by the minute to get off of it now!

FAST FORWARD TO NOW 2026 - My youngest daughter is in college studying law and like myself who attended law school one needs to be on the internet 99% of the time doing research, writing papers, looking up cases and law professors who can be the most unforgiving individuals telling his students that a more than 30-page report on serial killers is due in two days, I wondered how my now daughter found all her research and finished her project in one afternoon.

I asked her how she finished her project so quickly and she always told me, "I just used ChatGPT and cut, pasted, and then edited by changing words here and there." I began thinking, isn't that plagiarism? I had no clue what ChatGPT was and had no interest it at the time.

Now, I made the mistake of asking ChatGPT about my cheesecake business. How to market my cheesecake business, how to make a menu, how to make a business card, how to make an order form, how to do this, how to do that! Now, I am confused on what I have learned because every question I ask ChatGPT, there is different information from the last question. It is information that is totally opposite of what I asked in the first place.

AM I OVER THINKING EVERYTHING WHEN STARTING MY BUSINESS??