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Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

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Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect. This kind of junk is going to litter our collective knowledge bases for years. It looks just good enough to be authoritative, but is fundamentally incorrect.

So a Hacker News comment.

Yep, they trained the AI on hackernews

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To determine if a post on StackOverflow is generated by ChatGPT, you could look for certain characteristics that are typical of posts generated by the model. For example, ChatGPT posts may contain repetitive or nonsensical phrases, lack coherence or context, or have a distinctive "machine-like" writing style. Additionally, you can check the user profile of the poster to see if it indicates that the user is a language…

This has become a meme, at this point. - my opinion, not generated by ChatGPT.

Let's hope it stays as absurd as a meme and not something that any of us actually have to worry about.

- same as you

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#53
post #35

I think the ban on ChatGPT answers on Stack Overflow is a mistake. Sure, some of the answers might not be correct, but that's true for any tool. And the fact that ChatGPT answers are easy to produce means that more people can contribute, which can only be a good thing for the community. Plus, it's not like the moderators have to accept every answer - they can still weed out the bad ones. Let's not punish everyone bec…

ChatGPT misses the point that it mostly trains and hallucinates on info exclusively produced by humans. When sites like SO, Reddit, HN, Wikipedia begin to be dominated by GPT-3, it is then the humanity commences its ill-advised journey into the Matrix. As long as Chicken tastes good, I guess there will be few complaints (worry about the futility of staunch vegans, though).

— Human who watches SciFi movies

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#54
post #35

I think the ban on ChatGPT answers on Stack Overflow is a mistake. Sure, some of the answers might not be correct, but that's true for any tool. And the fact that ChatGPT answers are easy to produce means that more people can contribute, which can only be a good thing for the community. Plus, it's not like the moderators have to accept every answer - they can still weed out the bad ones. Let's not punish everyone bec…

I gotta admit, it puts forward it's fallacious points well:

And the fact that ChatGPT answers are easy to produce means that more people can contribute.

Actually, that means that fewer people and one robot will contribute.

But as the SO administrators say, these answer are close enough to true to require a lot of effort on the part administrators - and this stuff may promise a rocky road for answer and discussion sites in the near future. And that would not mean that more people are "participating" either.

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#55
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found a great example to demonstrate. I asked how to transpile Lisp to C. It perfectly described what transpiling is, said (correctly) that not all Lisp structures will translate directly into C, so those parts of the code may be broken, then gave this method for transpiling: sbcl --script example.lsp --output example.c Now... that would be REALLY GREAT if it was true. But SBCL is not a transpiler (except for bytec…

What happens when you give it the Lisp code and ask ChatGPT to do the transpiling?

Good question. Let's try it. Here is some Lisp code I know cannot be duplicated as-is in C:

    (defun num-atoms(list)
      (cond
       ((null list) 0)
       ((atom list) 1)
       (t (+ (num-atoms (car list)) (num-atoms (cdr list))))))
And here's the C code that ChatGPT created from it.

    #include 
    #include 

    typedef struct list_node {
      int data;
      struct list_node *next;
    } list_node;

    int num_atoms(list_node *list) {
      if (list == NULL) {
        return 0;
      } else if (list->next == NULL) {
        return 1;
      } else {
        return num_atoms(list->next) + num_atoms(list->next->next);
      }
    }

    int main() {
      list_node \*list = NULL;
      printf("%d\n", num_atoms(list));
      return 0;
    }
ChatGPT provided great writeup about what it's supposedly doing, and quite brilliantly states the following:

"Note that this implementation of the num_atoms function is not equivalent to the original Lisp function, as it does not correctly handle the (atom list) case. In C, it is not possible to directly check whether a value is an atom, as atoms are not a fundamental concept in C. To properly implement the num_atoms function in C, a more detailed specification of what is meant by an "atom" would be needed."

I then asked ChatGPT: "Make a function in C that duplicates (atom list) from Lisp" since that was the recommendation.

I like to think it got impatient with me badgering it about this subject, because the response starts with "As mentioned earlier, atoms are not a fundamental concept in C, so it is not possible to directly implement a function that duplicates the behavior of (atom list) in Lisp." But it then followed up with C code that approximates it (by simply checking if something is a list or not), and then explains why it is still not exactly the same as Lisp's implementation, and that it won't work correctly in every case as it would under Lisp.

It then ended with "The definition of an atom and the way it is identified may vary depending on the specific requirements of the problem being solved."

This could be quite educational. I really expected it to "make shit up," but it was pretty spot on.

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#56
post #33
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found a great example to demonstrate. I asked how to transpile Lisp to C. It perfectly described what transpiling is, said (correctly) that not all Lisp structures will translate directly into C, so those parts of the code may be broken, then gave this method for transpiling: sbcl --script example.lsp --output example.c Now... that would be REALLY GREAT if it was true. But SBCL is not a transpiler (except for bytec…

Reminds me of a story I read where an advanced computer (we'd call it AI now) when asked a question it couldn't answer, would simulate an entire universe where the question was answered, and then determine the answer and report back. And it'd get things like the sbcl command line above, because that was the right answer in the particular universe where the question could be answered.

That's straight up how Lisp macros work. It is alien technology after all.

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#57
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so, especially for StackOverflow. I want correct answers, not answers that just look correct.

Yep. Stable diffusion is powerful because there's no "right answer". Just better/worse variations of a prompt. GPT is going to be amazing for telling stories. Particularly, for "too literal" software engineers, like me. However, it doesn't seem to offer much in terms of hard, factual information that technical fields rely on.

Once again with the "right answers" for art. Stable Diffusion is just as bad at art as this is at programming. Both are "good" to fools and idiots (read your manager) who thinks your work is useless and needs to be farmed out (while theirs is vital, of course)

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#58

StackOverflow and Google are finished. This is expected and it may not look like it now, but banning an advancement in technology (even temporary) is usually the first step to irrelevance of those pushing back. In a few years from now when ChatGPT and perhaps the much awaited GPT-4 are released, get better, (or even an implementation is open sourced) it will further plummet the usage for SO and Google. The genie is o…

This was the thought I had as well when using it for the first time. Much of what I end up searching for (facts) are more directly answered by ChatGPT.

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#59

I tried ChatGPT with a few SO questions as input, it was completely missing the point of the questions more often than not. I got 3 bad answers and one correct one out of it. The scary part was just how confidently incorrect it was. The text looked very good, but there were big errors in there. I also tried to ask it a scientific question on a pretty niche field, and it produced a very reasonably looking answer. Most…

Scientific questions are, without being disparaging, mostly trivia. ChatGPT knows all of Wikipedia. If an answer could be found by extracting a passage from a Wikipedia article, ChatGPT will do a good job of answering it.

Ask ChatGPT to do any engineering work, and it falls flat. It's poor mathematical skills and lack of ability to create complex plans mean that it is relying purely on it's coherent-sounding dialog.

Re: Use of ChatGPT generated text for posts on Stack Overflow is temporarily banned

#60
Just finished Neil Stephenson's Anethem.

In it (I'm paraphrasing here) the open internet is destroyed by media companies who flood the internet with "good garbage", that is stuff that is _almost_ correct.

It forced people to pay for curated accurate content (that is, pay the same people who generated the good garbage in the first place).

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