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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

#161

Post by brookst »

_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…

Thank you. Tons of noise because people are mistaking a statistical tool for a sentient consciousness.

ChatGPT has no more interest in running a confidence game than it does in helping children learn critical reasoning. Which is to say none, zero, zilch in both cases. It has as much volition and desire as a calculator. It’s just a super impressive and useful calculator.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#162

Post by CodeWriter23 »

This my personal opinion and may be entirely worthless. The quality of answers I read in all of the examples posted in that article read like the questions were routed to an offshore boiler room where the answers were crafted by humans. Like some modern day Mechanical Turk. Especially in the 6 eggs example, there is a complete discontinuity of thought across the answers, isn't this within a single session with the AI? To me it looks like different brains answered each question/challenge and seemed to have a bias toward not offending the human asking the questions.

Also, in this example, the first answer of 2 is correct: broke 2 (6-2 = 4), fried 2 (4-2 = 2) then ate 2, which most commonly implies it was the fried eggs that were eaten (2-0 = 2)

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#163

Post by Karunamon »

kibwen wrote: post #110
tester457 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Stating a falsehood without intent to deceive is just incorrectness, not a "lie". Let's dial the hyperbole back a few notches.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#164

Post by spion »

ChatGPT is capable of reasoning but it has only one tool: "thinking out loud".

If you'd like it to solve more complex problems, ask it to do it step by step, writing down the results of each step and only at the end stating the conclusion based on the previously written results. Its reasoning capabilities will improve significantly.

It cannot do it "in its head" because it doesn't have one. All it has are previosuly generated tokens.

I wrote some examples in this Twitter thread and pointed out some additional caveats: https://twitter.com/spion/status/1621261544959918080

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#165

Post by undersuit »

kvetching wrote: post #132
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…

So frustrating to see people complain that it provides wrong information. With this logic it can never know anything. It is not made for querying. It's made to complete the text you provide it, with some minor modifications to help it answer questions. It does know the most common patterns of characters in the internet which implicitly contain knowledge.

Not that I see much evidence of what I'm about to assert in ourselves, but you should be able to correct ChatGPT's knowledge if it knows things and isn't just a fancy parrot.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#166

Post by weinzierl »

_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. Does this "person" make mistakes?"

Does this person stubbornly insist on being right, even if they are wrong?

Likely, that's just how humans usually behave - and ChatGPT does the same.

At least that was my thinking when people complain about ChatGPT being a know-it-all bluffer.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#167

Post by Karunamon »

weinzierl wrote: post #166
_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. Does this "person" make mistakes? " Does this person stubbornly insist on being right, even if they are wrong? Likely, that's just how humans usually behave - and ChatGPT does the same. At least that was my thinking when people complain about ChatGPT being a know-…

ChatGPT is pretty amenable to being corrected if it says something you know is crap. And then, in my experience, you usually get better results.

That is not something I can say for most humans.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#168

Post by evo_9 »

_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…

Yeah, it's fascinating to watch, right?

As others have pointed out — what did we expect of 'AI' created in our image? Aren't we all just bullshit artists of varying degree?

HN is the perfect place to learn how much BS you are - I DARE any subject matter expdrts on here to post on any topic and I guarantee another expert will step in and tell you why you're wrong, or at best, nitpick you apart.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#169

Post by hooande »

hospadar wrote: post #112

I wonder if the biggest shortcoming of GPT right now is not that it sometimes gets things wrong, or can't cite its sources, or whatever - maybe it needs to learn when to say "I don't know the answer to that question". That's a pretty hard thing for most humans (and myself) to learn to say, and I suspect GPT's training data (tha internet) doesn't include a lot of "I'm not sure" language and probably does include a lot…

You're flat out incorrect about this. GPT loves to say that it doesn't know things. Have you actually used it?

Don't take my word for it. Ask it: "How many people are wearing tennis shoes in the United States right now?"

The response I got: "I'm sorry, I don't have the current data on the number of people in the United States who are wearing tennis shoes right now. It's not possible to determine this number as it would require constantly monitoring the footwear of every person in the country, which is not feasible. The number would also vary greatly from moment to moment and would be influenced by a number of factors such as time of day, weather, and location."

No hallucinations, no bullshitting. Just "I don't know" and an explanation of what it would take it find out. No idea why you think it has trouble expressing a lack of confidence in its answers.

Re: ChatGPT: The Slickest Con Artist of All Time

#170

Post by dreadlordbone »

cribbles wrote: post #58

I would greatly appreciate a moratorium on this genre of article until there is compelling accompanying evidence that a meaningful portion of ChatGPT's users are unaware of these shortcomings. I have yet to encounter or even hear of a non-technical person playing around with ChatGPT without stumbling into the type of confidently-stated absurdities and half-truths displayed in this article, and embracing that as a lim…

The worst (real) criticism I've seen of ChatGPT: "yeah I played with it but I don't really know what to do with it"
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