Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics

simonwillison.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 485 posts

Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics

#121

Post by [deleted] »

Kranar wrote: post #79
williamcotton wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics

#122

Post by HDThoreaun »

gWPVhyxPHqvk wrote: post #91
simonw wrote: post #38

Earlier 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.

I pay $0 for Google with no delays. I don’t understand why I’d want to pay for information that’s less reliable. (I’m being slightly dense, but not really)

Google is a worse product than gpt for some queries. And it's funded by ads which distorts incentives.

Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics

#123

Post by davidthewatson »

How is GPT better or worse than the equivalent human talking head who may be employed by a large news organization or may be a de facto parrot from McLuhan or Postman's generation? Is ChatGPT weaponized in a way that is functionally any different than the seemingly default mode parroting of left/right false dichotomous views spewed out by news outlets for decades on Cable TV and now the internet? What makes GPT special in this regard? I find myself lecturing my neighbors on local news stories that are straightforward and routine by comparison to any problem of veracity in GPT I've witnessed in the last year of using it daily. The problem is not that GPT has invented veracity problems. Rather, the problem is that no one was listening when McLuhan said it, Postman said it, or Haidt said it. Veracity matters. Sensemaking is difficult. In response to weaponized misinformation, we need weaponized sensemaking. I've yet to see any indication that the best and brightest are working on the latter.

Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics

#124

Post by jki275 »

Kranar wrote: post #79
williamcotton wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You missed what he said. He copied the actual data into chatgpt as part of the prompt, and it gave the correct information.

without that data, it might, or might not, give correct info, and often it won't.

Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics

#125

Post by skybrian »

gWPVhyxPHqvk wrote: post #91
simonw wrote: post #38

Earlier 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.

I pay $0 for Google with no delays. I don’t understand why I’d want to pay for information that’s less reliable. (I’m being slightly dense, but not really)

It's not useful for every search, but I find it useful when I can't come up with a search query that will give me the results I want.

For example, ask it to recommend a good paper to read on some topic, then use Google to find the paper. If it made up the paper, you'll find out soon enough.

Also, when you remember something very vaguely, it can be a way to get a name you can search on.

Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics

#126

Post by Eisenstein »

bdw5204 wrote: post #118

The part that's concerning about ChatGPT is that a computer program that is "confidently wrong" is basically indistinguishable from what dumb people think smart people are like. This means people are going to believe ChatGPT's lies unless they are repeatedly told not to trust it just like they believe the lies of individuals whose intelligence is roughly equivalent to ChatGPT's. Based on my understanding of the appro…

I think it is better to assume that normal people can be deceived by confident language than to assume this is a problem with 'dumb people'.

Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics

#127

Post by simonw »

gWPVhyxPHqvk wrote: post #91
simonw wrote: post #38

Earlier 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.

I pay $0 for Google with no delays. I don’t understand why I’d want to pay for information that’s less reliable. (I’m being slightly dense, but not really)

Take a look at these four examples: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Apr/7/chatgpt-lies/#warn-off-...

Each of those are things that would take WAY longer for me to research or answer using Google.

Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics

#128

Post by simonw »

greenpeas wrote: post #99
simonw wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some examples of code things I've done with it here: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Apr/7/chatgpt-lies/#warn-off-... In terms of non-code things, here are a few from the past couple of days: - Coming up with potential analogies to explain why it's OK to call something a "language" model even though it doesn't have actual understanding of language - Exploring outliers in a CSV file (I was playing with the ne…

How can you trust that whatever the expression used in Finnish to denote "Artificial Intelligence" uses "wit" when translated back into English? Words in one language often don't have an exact counterpart in another language, and I'd be especially wary when it comes to languages from different families: Finnish is notorious for being one of the few European languages not part of the Indo-European family. It may very…

"How can you trust that" - I can't. This was idle curiosity. If I was going to publish this or do anything beyond satisfying my idle curiosity I would consult additional sources.

Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics

#129

Post by Eisenstein »

revolvingocelot wrote: post #36
zug_zug wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That all feels tad dramatic. It's like a person on the internet -- in that it's wrong 20% of the time, often confidently so. But the distinction is it's less rude, and more knowledgeable.

When someone is wrong on the internet, nailing both the tone and vocabulary of the type of expert said wrong someone is purporting to be is rare and impressive. But ChatGPT nails both an overwhelming amount of the time, IME, and in that way it is entirely unlike a person on the internet.

You can also ask a person on the internet to source their information and/or provide context.

Re: We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics

#130

Post by simonw »

CivBase wrote: post #104

Do people really put that much faith in the output from a chatbot? Or is this response just overblown? I've seen a lot of alarms rung about ChatGPTs propensity to lie, but I have yet to see any serious issues caused by it.

I've seen people try to win arguments on Twitter using screenshots they took of ChatGPT.
Post reply on HN