Microsoft 365 Copilot – your copilot for work

It was impressive on general information, but as I got to more specific questions, I got a lot of vague and vaguely incorrect responses. When I provided a specific paper on the topic, it provided similar generalizations.

The weird thing is that it completely fabricated the author's name. No part of the name was anywhere in the paper. Called on the error, ChatGPT then said, "sorry for the error, it's really [Different_Name_2]". Called on that error, it then said similar "sorry for the error it's really [Different_Name_3]", then [Different_Name_4], and [Different_Name_5]... Wrong dates also, but it finally did get the date right (displayed right above the line saying "Author"..."). It also hallucinated employers for these fabricated authors.

It never did provide the right info. When I specifically prompted it with "ou did find the correct date information. Right under that there is a line saying "Author:" and following that, there is the actual author's name and employer. Can you parse and answer me with that actual information about the author?"

It first responded with a red error message. Repeated, it hallucinated ANOTHER fabrication...

I'm just astonished about the way this thing doubles down on it's hallucinations.

This really is the invention of infinitely scaled bullshit.

Edit: Definition of BS is speech or writing produced not specifically to lie or tell the truth, but with utter disregard for the facts. E.g., a BS artist just spins tales that sound good, with neither malicious or deceitful intent, but also with zero care about truth.

He's presumably not doing 1) paste his draft into ChatGPT, 2) paste the ChatGPT output into the text editor, 3) click publish.

If your objective is to create a well-written and effective document (rather than having AI autowrite some useless email), you wouldn't just blindly publish the ChatGPT output. You would read through the text that ChatGPT outputs and spend a minute reviewing what it wrote and tweaking it to your liking. Over time, as you read the corrected well-written version of your original poorly-written content, your brain naturally picks up on the differences and learns how to write well.

I've experienced this personally with Grammarly. I had very low expectations going in, and I still don't like some of its suggestions, but over time as you see and apply the corrections it suggests, you naturally end up learning and improving your writing skills. It's a great learning tool.