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ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

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Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#101

Post by logifail »

bnralt wrote: post #51
karpierz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that it's an "incredibly smart" anything; I think it'd be better described as incredibly well-read, with poor discretion. But there's definitely uses for a tool that produces a lot of boilerplate content that a human can then proofread (ex: writing cover letters, filling out unstructured paperwork, etc.) Edit: I personally underestimated the use-case, because the "more optimal" thing to do when auto-fill…

> I don't know that it's an "incredibly smart" anything; I think it'd be better described as incredibly well-read, with poor discretion. But likely much better read and with much better discretion that most of people writing content these days. Which I think is part of the point that people are missing. ChatGPT’s output might not be as good as the best writing, but most of what people read is mediocre content with qu…

> ChatGPT’s output might not be as good as the best writing, but most of what people read is mediocre content with questionable accuracy.

I agree with this, but I think we may be missing the point.

Why are people reading mediocre content with questionable accuracy?

The problem is not: how to quickly and cheaply create content which is marginally less mediocre and marginally more accurate than what we currently have.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#102

Post by msm_ »

pdonis wrote: post #78
_huayra_ wrote: post #4

I can't tell what is worse now: the sycophantic ChatGPT hype guys/gals who write articles "it's coming for all of our jerbs!", or articles like this one that deliberately misuse ChatGPT and then say "it's overhyped". They're both missing the point. Yes, ChatGPT can be tricked, confidently give wrong answers, but it is still ludicrously useful. It is basically like having an incredibly smart engineer/scientists/philos…

> It is basically like having an incredibly smart engineer/scientists/philosopher/etc that can explain things quite well, but for pretty much every field. No. You've fallen for exactly the con the article is describing. ChatGPT knows nothing . It is very good at generating text that seems plausible if you know nothing about the subject matter, but is not reliable as an actual source of information . If you happened t…

I think that's unnecessarily pessimistic view. I have recently started using ChatGPT for mid-hard questions (when I can't get an answer immediately using Google), mostly "how do I" questions. It lies of dreams up fake answers about half of the time, but this still means that 50% of time I get my solution without digging through obscure manuals.

> It is basically like having an incredibly smart engineer/scientists/philosopher/etc that can explain things quite well, but for pretty much every field.

I like to think about it like asking questions to a well read but dishonest student during an oral exam. They know some things, and try really hard to answer every question, even resort to making things up in hope of getting a passing grade.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#103

Post by broast »

webstrand wrote: post #27
VBprogrammer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I recently learned about how the Toyota Synergy Drive system works in detail. Despite being the type of person who'd be interested in that kind of thing I thought it was not generally well understood, I've only come across one website which described it in detail. I asked ChatGPT about it and it game me a fairly surface level answer. I then asked it for more details and it went into detail far beyond what th…

In my experience from asking it questions about things that I know well, the deeper you get into the weeds with it, the more likely it is to invent some kind of extremely plausible-sounding but incorrect answer. How confident are you that what it told you is actually correct?

That's what I like to use it for. To come up with plausible answers for questions that people don't have correct answers for yet, and then probe the reasons behind it. It can be very creative and insightful in such uses.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#105

Post by kibwen »

tester457 wrote: post #96
pdonis wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is basically like having an incredibly smart engineer/scientists/philosopher/etc that can explain things quite well, but for pretty much every field. No. You've fallen for exactly the con the article is describing. ChatGPT knows nothing . It is very good at generating text that seems plausible if you know nothing about the subject matter, but is not reliable as an actual source of information . If you happened t…

> If you happened to get information from it that turned out to be ok, you were lucky. Don't expect your luck to last. For creating bash scripts and english to code it remains remarkably consistent. No need to be a master of multiple languages syntaxes now.

Of all the languages one could ask ChatGPT to generate, bash would be nearly the bottom of the list. The number of subtle footguns in bash are through the roof.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#106

Post by yellow_postit »

swatcoder wrote: post #86
VBprogrammer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I recently learned about how the Toyota Synergy Drive system works in detail. Despite being the type of person who'd be interested in that kind of thing I thought it was not generally well understood, I've only come across one website which described it in detail. I asked ChatGPT about it and it game me a fairly surface level answer. I then asked it for more details and it went into detail far beyond what th…

That's exactly the wrong sort of thing to turn to ChatGPT for. In probing it for more detail, you're giving it increasingly helpful hints on how to answer your questions in a way that makes you satisfied, regardless of accuracy. That's what it's optimized to do. And because you're working from a humble and curious understanding of the topic yourself, it can and will make up all sorts of things that make you believe i…

To OP’s point what’s with the gate keeping on “right” or “wrong” ways to use it?

It’s a tool. It has flaws. It can be useful and if it is, have at it.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#107

Post by bastardoperator »

I found 10 tweets to backup my anecdotal argument but it gave me enough confidence to rant about chatgpt. If twitter is your source of data, how are you doing anything different from chatgpt? All I'm getting from this piece is that this person has a fundamental misunderstanding of why people are finding chatgpt useful.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#108

Post by rqtwteye »

I don't understand why people are throwing a fit over this version of ChatGPT. Yes, it has problems but to me this is just a demonstration. I think this will be great for specialized cases like tech writing, requirements and system configuration. It could check requirements for consistency, test coverage and translate YAML config into something easier to understand. It could also look at your code and describe the design and point out problems.

I can't wait for AI to assist in these tasks. It's time.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#109

Post by b3morales »

_huayra_ wrote: post #4

I can't tell what is worse now: the sycophantic ChatGPT hype guys/gals who write articles "it's coming for all of our jerbs!", or articles like this one that deliberately misuse ChatGPT and then say "it's overhyped". They're both missing the point. Yes, ChatGPT can be tricked, confidently give wrong answers, but it is still ludicrously useful. It is basically like having an incredibly smart engineer/scientists/philos…

> help me practice a foreign language I've slowly been forgetting

So with the software stuff you can pretty easily verify the output: either the suggestion fixes the problem or it doesn't. But how can you trust it for something like this where you can't distinguish what's good and bad output? It could be leading you down the garden path with this language exercise. And it's not in the helpful thinking tool/bouncing ideas around category, either: there are rules of grammar that you don't know, and you don't know whether ChatGPT knows them either.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#110

Post by kibwen »

tester457 wrote: post #95
feifan wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A well-adjusted person should be able to signal some degree of confidence about what they're saying ("I know that…", "I think that…", "Maaaaaaybe…", etc). That's an anspect that ChatGPT doesn't have.

For the api appending such language is a waste of tokens, therefore a waste of money. People should use it while knowing it hallucinates all the time.

In other words, everyone should assume that it's lying at all times. Nobody should be using a product that both lies to you and then lies to you about the fact that it's lying to you.
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