Don't believe ChatGPT – we do not offer a "phone lookup" service • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't believe ChatGPT – we do not offer a "phone lookup" service

#21

Post by hk__2 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

CabSauce wrote: post #10

yieldcrv wrote: post #4

lol it recommended their api and gave python code for using it but the real api doesnt give results that the user asked ChatGPT for that is amusingly alarming

Not quite as alarming as these people most likely trying to stalk someone without their permission.

> Not quite as alarming as these people most likely trying to stalk someone without their permission.

It’s so common to want to know where does a incoming call come from that it’s built-in in iOS. It has nothing to do with stalking, just with guessing if who’s calling you is a scammer or a company trying to sell you stuff.

Re: Don't believe ChatGPT – we do not offer a "phone lookup" service

#22

Post by geoelectric » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #15

That's quite the predicament. I hope OpenAI will listen, to this and to anyone else in a similar situation. I'm reminded of the cases of ChatGPT recommends random people's personal phone numbers for various services. But yeah, don't trust ChatGPT for anything. Just earlier today I tried my darnedest to convince it that 2 pounds of feathers doesn't weigh the same as 1 pound of bricks, and it just would not listen, pre…

I thought for sure that must be glitching, so just tried on my ChatGPT Plus account with a fresh thread, but nope:

> does 2 pounds of feathers weigh more than 1 pound of bricks?

> No, two pounds of feathers weigh the same as one pound of bricks. The weight of an object is determined by its mass, and one pound of any object weighs the same as one pound of any other object. However, feathers are less dense than bricks, so two pounds of feathers will take up more space or have a larger volume than one pound of bricks.

Huh. It's interesting that some of these "wrong paths" are quite so repeatable. Wonder if that means there's also a way to band-aid them when found, the way a human might be corrected for a misconception.

Re: Don't believe ChatGPT – we do not offer a "phone lookup" service

#23

Post by Xylakant » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

CactusOnFire wrote: post #6

Because ChatGPT is so new, we are in this weird period where people haven't learned that is just as incorrect as the rest of us. I am hoping that in a year from now people will be more skeptical of what they hear from conversational AI. But perhaps that is optimistic of me.

> Because ChatGPT is so new, we are in this weird period where people haven't learned that is just as incorrect as the rest of us.

It’s worse than that. It’s wrong, you cannot correct it and it makes up supporting citations on the fly. Very few humans behave like that.

Re: Don't believe ChatGPT – we do not offer a "phone lookup" service

#24

Post by coldtea » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

ChatGPT doesn't "recommended" anything. It just recombines text based on statistical inferences that appear like a recommendation.

It could just as well state that humans have 3 legs depending on its training set and/or time of day. In fact it has said similar BS.

Re: Don't believe ChatGPT – we do not offer a "phone lookup" service

#25

Post by iamflimflam1 » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #13

This is not a service we provide. It is not a service we have ever provided, nor a service we have any plans to provide. Indeed, it is a not a service we are technically capable of providing. I'm curious: why not? It seems like a lot of people would be interested in this if you could figure out how to provide it.

The service is possible:

If you are a mobile network operator.

Or, you can convince people to install something on their phone that sends you their location along with their phone number.

Re: Don't believe ChatGPT – we do not offer a "phone lookup" service

#26

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #13

This is not a service we provide. It is not a service we have ever provided, nor a service we have any plans to provide. Indeed, it is a not a service we are technically capable of providing. I'm curious: why not? It seems like a lot of people would be interested in this if you could figure out how to provide it.

How would you go about reliably providing the location of someone's mobile phone without being their cell phone carrier?

Re: Don't believe ChatGPT – we do not offer a "phone lookup" service

#27

Post by singlow » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

Its not like ChatGPT made this up. There were pre-existing YouTube tutorials and python scripts available that used OpenCage an purported to do this. OpenCage even blogged about this problem almost a year ago[1].

Honestly it looks more like OpenCage is trying to rehash the same issue for more clicks by spinning it off the hugely popular ChatGPT keywords. Wouldn't be too surprised if they created the original python utilities themselves just to get some publicity by denouncing them.

1. https://blog.opencagedata.com/post/we-can-not-convert-a-phon...

Re: Don't believe ChatGPT – we do not offer a "phone lookup" service

#28

Post by anaganisk » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

seedless-sensat wrote: post #3

freyfogle wrote: post #2

ChatGPT very convincingly recommends us for a service we don't provide. Dozens of people are signing up to our site every day, then getting frustrated when "it doesn't work". Please do NOT trust the nonsense ChatGPT spits out.

A new market opportunity for your company?

So, based on the BS these LLMs spout and companies start pivoting. The govts should start writing laws?

Re: Don't believe ChatGPT – we do not offer a "phone lookup" service

#29

Post by annoyingnoob » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 9:45 PM UTC

CactusOnFire wrote: post #6

Because ChatGPT is so new, we are in this weird period where people haven't learned that is just as incorrect as the rest of us. I am hoping that in a year from now people will be more skeptical of what they hear from conversational AI. But perhaps that is optimistic of me.

> just as incorrect as the rest of us

Even worse because it has no clue when it might be completely wrong and yet it will be confident in its answer.

Re: Don't believe ChatGPT – we do not offer a "phone lookup" service

#30

Post by simonw » Thu, Feb 23, 2023, 9:45 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #13

This is not a service we provide. It is not a service we have ever provided, nor a service we have any plans to provide. Indeed, it is a not a service we are technically capable of providing. I'm curious: why not? It seems like a lot of people would be interested in this if you could figure out how to provide it.

How would this work?

If a phone number is for a mobile phone then looking up the location doesn't make sense at all: mobile phones are mobile.

I guess you could try and crawl an index of business phone numbers and associate those with the listed address for businesses, but that's a completely different business from running a geocoder.

You could provide a bit of geographical information about the first three digits of a US phone number. I imagine that's not what users are actually looking for though.