Getting Started with OpenAI

Most of the demonstrations in this substack use OpenAI as the backend LLM system. To use it, you’ll need to sign up for an account with them to get an API key. The costs of using OpenAI for simple demos are incredibly cheap; my June, 2023 bill from them was under $5. You are able to put a limit on your spending so you cannot accidentally run up a large bill. And they give you a few months of free usage to get started.

You can read the original post on the topic here, but in short:

1. Go to https://platform.openai.com/signup to sign up for an account.

2. Copy and save your sk-… API key (as you get to see it just once)

3. Set a low (e.g., $15) limit on your monthly usage here: https://platform.openai.com/account/billing/limits

On the setting of limits: GPT-4 costs about 20x as much at GPT-3.5 to use. I had forgotten I told an app to use GPT-4 instead of GPT-3.5 and I started testing it heavily. Only the email from OpenAI alerting me to approaching my limit saved me from running up a huge bill.

Set the limit, you’ll thank me.