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Show HN: Turning books into chatbots with GPT-3

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Re: Show HN: Turning books into chatbots with GPT-3

#121

Post by alex_young »

Asking A Brief History of Time:

"What was the universe like shortly before the big bang?"

> "Shortly before the Big Bang, the universe was incredibly hot and dense, with all matter and energy concentrated into a single point. This point contained all the mass and energy of the entire universe, and it was expanding at an incredibly rapid rate. This expansion created space and time, and eventually, the universe as we know it today."

"Why can't we know what the universe was like before the big bang?"

> "The Big Bang marks the beginning of the universe as we know it, so it is impossible to know what the universe was like before it. We can, however, make educated guesses based on the laws of physics and the data we have collected. For example, some theories suggest that the universe may have undergone a period of inflation before the Big Bang, which could explain why the universe is so large and homogeneous."

Re: Show HN: Turning books into chatbots with GPT-3

#123

Post by rakejake »

version_five wrote: post #87
anthropodie wrote: post #8

This is one application of AI that I absolutely like. Imagine in future the AI will be able to ingest any video, blog, books, manuals, license and whole lot of other things and we will just be able to ask questions to it or get a summary from it. I wonder what will happen to actual content then. Currently YouTube is showing info about most watched section of the clips. It saves so much time! Now imagine that happenin…

I have a decent sized book collection, and what I'd like the most is a ctrl-f for books. Does that exist already in e-readers? Personally I think question answering is still very gimmicky, in particular because I can't clearly understand why the answer is what it is. Ctrl-f is completely explainable, I know why it works and why it fails, and is a much more useful tool to engage with books. The main problem seems that…

Not sure about e-readers. But any EPUB can be searched like any other text.

Re: Show HN: Turning books into chatbots with GPT-3

#124

Post by alex_young »

alex_young wrote: post #121

Asking A Brief History of Time: "What was the universe like shortly before the big bang?" > "Shortly before the Big Bang, the universe was incredibly hot and dense, with all matter and energy concentrated into a single point. This point contained all the mass and energy of the entire universe, and it was expanding at an incredibly rapid rate. This expansion created space and time, and eventually, the universe as we k…

Also:

"Why is space flat?"

> "Space is flat because of the Cosmological Principle, which states that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic. This means that it is the same in all directions and on all scales, so it appears to be flat. The Cosmological Principle is supported by observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, which is the most distant light that can be detected."

"Why is space curved?"

> "Space is curved because of the presence of matter and energy. According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravity is not a force, but rather a consequence of the curvature of space and time caused by the presence of mass and energy. This curvature of space causes objects to move along curved paths, which explains why the planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun."

Re: Show HN: Turning books into chatbots with GPT-3

#125

Post by pyinstallwoes »

alex_young wrote: post #121

Asking A Brief History of Time: "What was the universe like shortly before the big bang?" > "Shortly before the Big Bang, the universe was incredibly hot and dense, with all matter and energy concentrated into a single point. This point contained all the mass and energy of the entire universe, and it was expanding at an incredibly rapid rate. This expansion created space and time, and eventually, the universe as we k…

Perhaps it's not about time, but about the Word. Given there exists no words to describe something before some thing.

"In the beginning was the Word..."

Re: Show HN: Turning books into chatbots with GPT-3

#126

Post by 56friends »

Interesting.

This is, perhaps, the most novel and innovative use of a GPT model I have encountered so far.

It feels like you have invented a new product category. Maybe “category” isn’t the right term, a feature? This should be one of the ways to consume and interact with books in the future. It’s an amazing tool for better understanding the material, revising, replacing bookmarks in many cases, and so on. A fascinating advancement!

I want this to be bundled with every book I buy from now on.

Re: Show HN: Turning books into chatbots with GPT-3

#128

Post by arglebargle123 »

version_five wrote: post #87
anthropodie wrote: post #8

This is one application of AI that I absolutely like. Imagine in future the AI will be able to ingest any video, blog, books, manuals, license and whole lot of other things and we will just be able to ask questions to it or get a summary from it. I wonder what will happen to actual content then. Currently YouTube is showing info about most watched section of the clips. It saves so much time! Now imagine that happenin…

I have a decent sized book collection, and what I'd like the most is a ctrl-f for books. Does that exist already in e-readers? Personally I think question answering is still very gimmicky, in particular because I can't clearly understand why the answer is what it is. Ctrl-f is completely explainable, I know why it works and why it fails, and is a much more useful tool to engage with books. The main problem seems that…

Yes but also no. If you have an exact string query that'll turn up the topic you want then, sure, you can find a topic easily. If your question is more tangential, say you kind of know what topic you're looking for but don't know what it's called in language X's standard library, you're pretty basically SOL unless an author happened to mention a phrase you can match.

Using chat GPT to solve this problem seems pretty awesome, it would be super handy to query my (larger than it has any right to be) library of reference books using not-exactly-competent requests.

This and translating technical material into 5th grade reading level explanations are probably the best two uses of chat GPT I've seen yet.

Re: Show HN: Turning books into chatbots with GPT-3

#129

Post by m463 »

This makes me think of school and exam questions (and the effects it will have).

and I'm reminded of that ancient joke "the final exam", which has a whole bunch of impossible questions on it ("Define the universe, give three examples")

For computer science it was (ironically):

Computer Science: Write a fifth-generation computer language. Using this language, write a computer program to finish the rest of this exam for you.

Re: Show HN: Turning books into chatbots with GPT-3

#130

Post by matchagaucho »

ed_mercer wrote: post #119
jordanlewis wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing the authors created a hand-written prompt for each of the books in the library.

So then, at most, ChatGPT would only know a brief summary about the book?

ChatGPT might have a larger text buffer (the much anticipated GPT-4).

But IIRC GPT-3 has a 4K prompt limit. Enough to fit a concise book summary, I suppose.

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