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Drew Kadel

My daughter, who has had a degree in computer science for 25 years, posted this observation about ChatGPT on Facebook. It's the best description I've seen:

Something that seems fundamental to me about ChatGPT, which gets lost over and over again: When you enter text into it, you're asking "What would a response to this sound like?" If you put in a scientific question, and it comes back with a response citing a non-existent paper with a plausible title, using a real journal name and an author name who's written things related to your question, it's not being tricky or telling lies or doing anything at all surprising! This is what a response to that question would sound like! It did the thing! But people keep wanting the "say something that sounds like an answer" machine to be doing something else, and believing it *is* doing something else. It's good at generating things that sound like responses to being told it was wrong, so people think that it's engaging in introspection or looking up more information or something, but it's not, it's only, ever, saying something that sounds like the next bit of the conversation.
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Kyozou

@DrewKadel She’s right. And that being the case, why on earth is anyone using it? If it’s not providing correct information, WTH is the point?

I just saw a post that cites info from ChatGPT about companies doing business in TN. As if it’s an authoritative source…

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maxy

@kyozou @DrewKadel Well, it is usually correct for questions that are common on the Internet.

Today I pasted it some data definition and asked to implement a simple filtering in Javascript. I could have looked it up in five minutes. But it generated something that worked (with my particular data) in five seconds. I asked a follow-up request "write this in functional style", and it did. I generally know Javascript, but it used an API method that I didn't know about.

Drew Kadel

@maxy @kyozou It's not that it's useless. For a sophisticated user like you it can be a very useful tool. But it's apparent language sophistication results in people who are more sophisticated in, say, literature or historical research than computer tech, thinking that it does more than it does.

Apr 07, 2023, 12:14 PM·Quiet public
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maxy

@DrewKadel @kyozou Yes, we need to educate more people what this thing does and how/why it can fail so badly. (Your daughter's post does that.)

But we don't have to expect garbage always. ChatGPT is not just a raw LM, it has also been fine-tuned towards good answers.

I have not yet seen it fail for well-covered topics. (Granted, I still always cross-check.) Queries like: "What are good material choices for small sculptures that are not too technical?" or "What is associated with Stalin?".

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