If you expect to be able to ask it an underspecified question without context and without telling it what role it should take and how it should act, sure, that often fails entirely. It's not a productive use of ChatGPT at all.

If, on the other hand you actually put together a prompt which tells it what you expect, the results are very different.

E.g. I've experimented with "co-writing" specs for small projects with it, and I'll start with a prompt of the type "As a software architect you will read the following spec. If anything is unclear you will ask for clarification. You will also offer suggestions for how to improve. If I've left "TODO" notes in the text you will suggest what to put there." and a lot more steps, but the key element is to 1) tell it what role it should assume - you wouldn't hire someone without telling them what their job is, 2) tell it what you expect in return, and what format you want it in if applicable, 3) if you want it to ask for clarifications, either ask for it and/or tell it to follow a back and forth conversational model instead of dumping a large / full answer on you.

The precise type of prompt you should use will depend greatly on the type of conversation you want to be able to have.