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Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

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Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#281

Post by SoftTalker »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #139
exe34 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favourite: "a decision was made to...". It means "I decided to do this, but I don't have the balls to admit it."

That's funny, I always thought that meant, "my superior told me I had to do this obviously stupid thing but I'm not going to say my superior was the one who decided this obviously stupid thing." Only occasionally, that is said in a tongue-and-cheek way to refer directly to the speaker as the "superior in charge of the decision."

You’re both right; I’ve seen it used both ways.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#282

Post by qotgalaxy »

csinode wrote: post #271
jll29 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is executives want to completely remove humans from the loop, which almost universally leads to disastrous results Thanks for your words of wisdom, which touch on a very important other point I want to raise: often, we (i.e., developers, researchers) construct a technology that would be helpful and "net benign" if deployed as a tool for humans to use, instead of deploying it in order to replace humans.…

The problem here is societal, not technological. An end state where people do less work than they do today but society is more productive is desirable, and we shouldn't be trying to force companies/governments/etc to employ people to do an unnecessary job. The problem is that people who are laid off often experience significant life disruption. And people who work in a field that is largely or entirely replaced by te…

So it's simple: don't do anything at all about the technology that is the impetus for these horrible disruptions, just completely rebuild our entire society instead.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#283

Post by montagg »

jll29 wrote: post #169
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…

> The problem is executives want to completely remove humans from the loop, which almost universally leads to disastrous results Thanks for your words of wisdom, which touch on a very important other point I want to raise: often, we (i.e., developers, researchers) construct a technology that would be helpful and "net benign" if deployed as a tool for humans to use, instead of deploying it in order to replace humans.…

I think you’re describing the principle/agent problem that people have wrestled with forever. Oppenheimer comes to mind.

You make something, but because you don’t own it—others caused and directed the effort—you don’t control it. But the people who control things can’t make things.

Should only the people who can make things decide how they are used though? I think that’s also folly. What about the rest of society affected by those things?

It’s ultimately a societal decision-making problem: who has power, and why, and how does the use of power affect who has power (accountability).

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#284

Post by ldeian »

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…

> Sometimes it comes up with a better approach than I had thought of. Then I change the API so that its code works.

“Sometimes” being a very important qualifier to that statement.

Claude 4 naturally doesn’t write code with any kind of long term maintenance in-mind, especially if it’s trying to make things look like what the less experienced developers wrote in the same repo.

Please don’t assume just because it looks smart that it is. That will bite you hard.

Even with well-intentional rules, terrible things happen. It took me weeks to see some of it.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#287

Post by ipaddr »

plemer wrote: post #97
normie3000 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with passive?

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…

#2 Is the most pleasant form. The proposal being approved is the most important. #1 Tries to make the manager approving more important then the approval.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#288

Post by Velorivox »

nomel wrote: post #274
gortok wrote: post #254

I think folks have taken the wrong lesson from this. It’s not that they added a new feature because there was demand. They added a new feature because technology hallucinated a feature that didn’t exist. The savior of tech, generative AI, was telling folks a feature existed that didn’t exist. That’s what the headline is, and in a sane world the folks that run ChatGPT would be falling over themselves to be sure it did…

> in a sane world the folks that run ChatGPT would be falling over themselves to be sure it didn’t happen again This would be a world without generative AI available to the public, at the moment. Requiring perfection would either mean guardrails that would make it useless for most cases, or no LLM access until AGI exists, which are both completely irrational, since many people are finding practical value in its curre…

> which are both completely irrational

Really!?

[0] https://i.imgur.com/ly5yk9h.png

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#289

Post by tomhow »

dingnuts wrote: post #60

[flagged]

Please don't do this here. If a comment seems unfit for HN, please flag it and email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can have a look.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44492212 and marked it off topic.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#290

Post by tomhow »

dingnuts wrote: post #86
simonw wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think my writing is AI-generated you need to recalibrate your AI writing detection skills, they're way off.

[flagged]

Woah! You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter who you're replying to or what it's about.

If posts are unfit for HN or if you think someone is posting too much, flag them and email us, and there are things we can do.

It's never ok to personally attack someone like this on HN. If we want others to do better we have to hold ourselves to a high standard too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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