🎚️ Make ChatGPT build you a calculator instead of giving you a lecture
That’s Intelligent UI. With GPT-6, ChatGPT can answer with things you click and drag instead of a wall of text: buttons, forms, charts and checklists.
ChatGPT/Kim Komando
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My sister called me about a weekend consulting gig. Was it worth it? I asked ChatGPT and got a thoughtful paragraph about “work-life balance” and “your long-term goals.” Lovely. Useless.
So I asked it to build her a calculator instead. I got sliders for hours, rate, taxes and mileage. We dragged them to match the offer and watched the gig shrink to $11 an hour. She kept her Saturday.
Before she emails me: Yes, she’s my much, much older sister. (Love you, sis.)
That’s Intelligent UI. With GPT-6, ChatGPT can answer with things you click and drag instead of a wall of text: buttons, forms, charts and checklists. Ask it for a tool, and it builds one right in the chat. The catch is a setting that turns most of it off.
⏱️ The 60-second setup
- On a computer, go to chatgpt.com, click your profile icon and choose Settings.
- Open Personalization, then Layout and Visuals.
- If it says Simple, switch it. Simple tells ChatGPT to cut back on visuals and interactive pieces, which means paragraphs.
- Start a regular chat. Intelligent UI doesn’t work in Voice mode or the Work tab, and it’s off if you pick the Pro reasoning option.
✍️ The prompt:
Build me an interactive calculator, not an answer. I’m deciding whether to take [describe the offer: pay, hours, days, location]. Give me sliders for number of days, hours per day, hourly rate, tax rate, round-trip miles, drive time and any costs I’d cover myself, like parking or supplies. Show my real take-home per hour, after taxes and costs, counting drive time as working time. Put the formula underneath, so I can check it.
🧮 Check the math
Don’t trust a slider you can’t audit. That’s why the prompt asks for the formula. Here’s my sister’s offer: $30 an hour for two five-hour days, about an hour in the car each way.
- Pay: 10 hours × $30 = $300
- Taxes at 30%: −$90
- Gas and parking: $27.50/day
- What’s left: $155
- Divided by 14 hours (10 working, 4 driving): $11.07 an hour
You get the idea.
🔎 The fine print: Your sliders don’t follow you. Open a new chat and you start from zero, so screenshot your result. Simple mode can still show some visuals, and ChatGPT sometimes decides plain text is better. If you get a paragraph anyway, reply: “Make this an interactive calculator.”
Try it on a job offer with a longer commute, a second shift or a holiday retail gig. Same sliders, different heartbreak.