Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists • Hacker News Board

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#111

Post by DonHopkins » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:10 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #100

plemer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passive voice often adds length, impedes flow, and subtracts the useful info of who is doing something. Examples: * Active - concise, complete info: The manager approved the proposal. * Passive - wordy, awkward: The proposal was approved by the manager. * Passive - missing info: The proposal was approved. [by who?] Most experienced writers will use active unless they have a specific reason not to, e.g., to emphasize…

Sometimes the missing info is obvious, irrelevant, or intentionally not disclosed, so "The proposal was approved" can be better. Informally we often say, "They approved the proposal," in such cases, or "You approve the proposal" when we're talking about a future or otherwise temporally indefinite possibility, but that's not acceptable in formal registers. Unfortunately, the resulting correlation between the passive v…

E-Prime is cool. OOPS! I mean E-Prime cools me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime

E-Prime (short for English-Prime or English Prime, sometimes É or E′) denotes a restricted form of English in which authors avoid all forms of the verb to be.

E-Prime excludes forms such as be, being, been, present tense forms (am, is, are), past tense forms (was, were) along with their negative contractions (isn't, aren't, wasn't, weren't), and nonstandard contractions such as ain't and 'twas. E-Prime also excludes contractions such as I'm, we're, you're, he's, she's, it's, they're, there's, here's, where's, when's, why's, how's, who's, what's, and that's.

Some scholars claim that E-Prime can clarify thinking and strengthen writing, while others doubt its utility.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#112

Post by giancarlostoro » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:12 PM UTC

Forget prompt engineering, how do you make ChatGPT do this for anything you want added to your project that you have no control over? Lol

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#113

Post by soganess » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:12 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #78

avalys wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you feel so entitled to tell other people what to do?

Anyone is entitled to make a request—or to ignore one.

There is a big difference between the above 'request' and, say, me politely asking the time of a complete stranger I walk by on the street.

Requests containing elements of hostility, shame, or injury frequently serve dual purposes: (1) the ostensible aim of eliciting an action and (2) the underlying objective of inflicting some from of harm (here shame) as a means compelling compliance through emotional leverage. Even if the respondent doesn't honor the request, the secondary purpose still occurs.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#114

Post by zzo38computer » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:13 PM UTC

There are a few things which could be done in the case of a situation like that:

1. I might consider a thing like that like any other feature request. If not already added to the feature request tracker, it could be done. It might be accepted or rejected, or more discussion may be wanted, and/or other changes made, etc, like any other feature request.

2. I might add a FAQ entry to specify that it does not have such a feature, and that ChatGPT is wrong. This does not necessarily mean that it will not be added in future, if there is a good reason to do so. If there is a good reason to not include it, this will be mentioned, too. It might also be mentioned other programs that can be used instead if this one doesn't work.

Also note that in the article, the second ChatGPT screenshot has a note on the bottom saying that ChatGPT can make mistakes (which, in this case, it does). Their program might also be made to detect ChatGPT screenshots and to display a special error message in that case.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#115

Post by DonHopkins » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:13 PM UTC

bityard wrote: post #105

normie3000 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with passive?

In addition to the points already made, passive voice is painfully boring to read. And it's literally everywhere in technical documentation, unfortunately.

Mistakes were made in the documentation.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#116

Post by zzo38computer » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

AIPedant wrote: post #59

nottorp wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the OP reviewed the "AI" output, deemed it useful and only then implemented it. This is generally how you work with LLMs.

I don't think they deemed it "useful": We’ve never supported ASCII tab; ChatGPT was outright lying to people. And making us look bad in the process, setting false expectations about our service.... We ended up deciding: what the heck, we might as well meet the market demand. [...] My feelings on this are conflicted. I’m happy to add a tool that helps people. But I feel like our hand was forced in a weird way. Should…

ASCII tablature is not something I use and not something I know much about, but if you are correct then I think that might be a good reason to deliberately avoid such a feature.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#117

Post by Koffiepoeder » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

Sharlin wrote: post #74

amelius wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care if the document becomes longer. Finding repeat signs is driving me nuts :)

Why?

It can be hard during live performances, because it can incur large jumps in the sheet music which can be annoying to follow. Not a problem if you learned the pieces by heart or have a pageturner, but this is not always feasible or the case.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#118

Post by dimatura » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

momojo wrote: post #66

kragen wrote: post #30

I've found this to be one of the most useful ways to use (at least) GPT-4 for programming. Instead of telling it how an API works, I make it guess, maybe starting with some example code to which a feature needs to be added. Sometimes it comes up with a better approach than I had thought of. Then I change the API so that its code works. Conversely, I sometimes present it with some existing code and ask it what it does…

A light-weight anecdote: Many many python image-processing libraries have an `imread()` function. I didn't know about this when designing our own bespoke image-lib at work, and went with an esoteric `image_get()` that I never bothered to refactor. When I ask ChatGPT for help writing one-off scripts using the internal library I often forget to give it more context than just `import mylib` at the top, and it almost alw…

I don't know if there's an earlier source, but I'm guessing Matlab originally popularized the `imread` name, and that OpenCV (along with its python wrapper) took it from there, same for scipy. Scikit-image then followed along, presumably.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#119

Post by andybak » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:19 PM UTC

chaboud wrote: post #63

I had a smaller version of this when coding on a flight (with no WiFi! The horror!) over the Pacific. Llama hallucinated array-element operations and list-comprehension in C#. I liked the shape of the code otherwise, so, since I was using custom classes, I just went ahead and implemented both features. I also went back to just sleeping on those flights and using connected models for most of my code generation needs.

Curious to see the syntax and how it compares to Linq

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#120

Post by arscan » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:20 PM UTC

normie3000 wrote: post #90

suzzer99 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes it comes up with a better approach than I had thought of. IMO this has always been the killer use case for AI—from Google Maps to Grammarly. I discovered Grammarly at the very last phase of writing my book. I accepted maybe 1/3 of its suggestions, which is pretty damn good considering my book had already been edited by me dozens of times AND professionally copy-edited. But if I'd have accepted all of Gram…

What's wrong with passive?

There was a time when Microsoft Word would treat the passive voice in your writing with the same level of severity as spelling errors or major grammatical mistakes. Drove me absolutely nuts in high school.