We need to demystify it by telling the truth. ChatGPT will give best combination of words it can to complete your phrase based on statistics.
We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics
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Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics
#72I have used ChatGPT a lot for the past 2 weeks. Mainly asking it engine building questions because it can simplify things, however I cannot be sure if it isn't hallucinating/lying to me.
Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I pay for ChatGPT Plus, and use it with no delays at all dozens of times a day. The more I use it the better I get at predicting if it can be useful for a specific question or not.
What do you use it for? I'm assuming code related? I've found it useful for some boilerplate + writing tests and making some script and some documentation. I'm curious what you or others that use it all day use it for especially if it's not for programming?
It's very good for taking roughly structured data and turning it into strongly structured data. E.g. someone with low data literacy or a program not designed to allow data export gave you something that needs to be made useful... In my day to day work (aside from programming) I find it helpful in writing stories and documentation.
Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics
#74Probably the most accurate thing to say is that GPT is improvising a novel. If you were improvising a novel where someone asked a smart person a question, and you knew the answer, you'd put the right answer in their mouths. If someone in the novel asked a smart person a question and you didn't know the answer, you'd try to make up something that sounded smart. That's what GPT is doing.
I think the concern is to get laypeople to understand that ChatGPT's output has a non-tangential chance of being completely false, not to get laypeople to understand the nuances of the falsities ChatGPT may produce. In this case, lying is the most effective description even if it isn't the most accurate one.
I'm not sure that's the case. After all, most people lie to you for a reason. GPT isn't purposely trying to mislead you for its own gain; in fact that's part of the reason that our normal "lie detectors" completely fail: there's absolutely nothing to gain from making up (say) a plausible sounding scientific reference; so why would we suspect GPT of doing so?
Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics
#75Indeed. We are anthropomorphizing them. I do it all the time and I should know better. There are already a few reports floating around of people who have seemingly been driven mad, come to believe strongly that the language model they're using is a conversation with a real person. A lot of people will really struggle with this going forward, I think. If we're going to anthropomorphize, then let us anthropomorphize wi…
ChatGPT4 is the human equivalent of a primate or apex predator encountering a mirror for the first time in their lives.
ChatGPT4 is reflecting back at us an extract of the sum of the human output it has been 'trained' upon. Of course the output feels human!
LLMs have zero capability to abstract anything resembling a concept, to abstract a truth from a fiction, or to reason about such things.
The generation of the most likely text in the supplied context looks amazing, and is in many cases very useful.
But fundamentally, what we have is an industrial-scale bullshirt generator, with BS being defined as text or speech generated to meet the moment without regard for truth or falsehood. No deliberate lies, only confabulation (as TFA mentioned).
Indeed, we should not mince words; people must be told that it will lie. It will lie more wildly than any crazy person, and with absolute impunity and confidence. Then when called out, it will apologize, and correct itself with another bigger lie (I've watched it happen multiple times), and do this until you are bored or laughing so hard you cannot continue.
The salad of truth and lies may be very useful, but people need to know this is an industrial-strength bullshirt generator, and be prepared to sort the wheat from the chaff.
(And ignore the calls for stopping this "dangerous AI". It is not intelligent. Even generating outputs for human tests based on ingesting human texts is not displaying intelligence, it is displaying pattern matching, and no, human intelligence is not merely pattern matching. And Elon Musk's call for halting is 100% self-interested. ChatGPT4's breakthru utility is not under his name so he's trying to force a gap that he can use to catch up.)
Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics
#76[deleted]
Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics
#77People need to be told that ChatGPT can't lie. Or rather, it lies in the same way that your phone "lies" when it autocorrects "How's your day?" to "How's your dad?" that you sent to your friend two days after his dad passed away. They need to be told that ChatGPT is a search engine with advanced autocomplete. If they understood this, they'd probably find that it's actually useful for some things, and they can also avoid getting fooled by hype and the coming wave of AI grifts.
Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't give ChatGPT a Wikipedia article though.
Sure you can. The easiest way is to go to https://chat.openai.com/chat and paste in a Wikipedia article. There are more involved manners like this: https://github.com/williamcotton/transynthetical-engine/blob...
Yes, this is a common misconception. ChatGPT can not actually read URLs you give it. It does have some awareness of websites based on its training, so it can in some sense relate a URL you provide to it with its subject matter, but when you give ChatGPT a URL to summarize or discuss, it doesn't actually read that website in anyway.
Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure you can. The easiest way is to go to https://chat.openai.com/chat and paste in a Wikipedia article. There are more involved manners like this: https://github.com/williamcotton/transynthetical-engine/blob...
For example, I copied the "New York Mets" sidebar section from the Mets wikipedia into ChatGPT+ GPT-4 and then asked "What years did the Mets when the NL East division?" The New York Mets won the NL East Division titles in the following years: 1969, 1973, 1986, 1988, 2006, and 2015. This is correct, btw.
You could also just ask it:
"What years did the Mets when the NL East division?"
Without any reference to anything and it will give you the correct answer as well.
You have been duped into believing that ChatGPT reads websites. It doesn't.
Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the concern is to get laypeople to understand that ChatGPT's output has a non-tangential chance of being completely false, not to get laypeople to understand the nuances of the falsities ChatGPT may produce. In this case, lying is the most effective description even if it isn't the most accurate one.
I'm not sure that's the case. After all, most people lie to you for a reason. GPT isn't purposely trying to mislead you for its own gain; in fact that's part of the reason that our normal "lie detectors" completely fail: there's absolutely nothing to gain from making up (say) a plausible sounding scientific reference; so why would we suspect GPT of doing so?
You're still focused on accurately describing the category of falsehood ChatGPT produces. You're missing the point. The point is that people don't even understand that ChatGPT produces falsehoods significantly enough that every statement it produces must be first determined about its truthfulness. To describe it as a liar effectively explains that understanding without any technical knowledge.