3 ms·

It insisted to me for a while that the sun was red. The "guardrails" do nothing to stop it from lying confidently about almost everything.

mwigdahl 4y ago
A lot of people say that the model is "lying" when it returns incorrect facts. Generally when friends or family confidently assert facts that they are sure but also incorrect about, we call them "misinformed" rather than connoting malice with the word "lying". Have they heard the right facts but associated them incorrectly? Heard the wrong facts from whatever source they obtained them from? Either or both could also be true of ChatGPT.
- Miraste 4y ago
  Yes, and either word is anthropomorphising. I stick with "lying" nonetheless, because if you start a conversation with "What color is the sun?" it returns a correct answer. It already has the association between "sun" and "white" in the model, but for whatever reason the context of my conversation made it say the sun is red. "Lying" seems to describe this behavior better than "misinformed."
- Oxidation 4y ago
  It's more like you can't actually read but you've seen a lot of media about cars that contain text saying they have a thing called a "width" around the 1.7-2m mark and usually aren't round numbers. So when someone asks you how wide a 2011[1] Ford Focus is[2], you say "1,769mm" and look confident. Syntactically right and by any probabilistic model, pretty good and plausible. [1] and if you ask for 2012, it tells you "I'm sorry, but I am not able to browse the internet to provide you with the specific dimensions of the 2012 Ford Focus." [2] according to Google results, it's 1823 mm to 1842 mm.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
I’ve only seen it do stuff like that if I assert a false premise and ask it questions off the false premise.
- Oxidation 4y ago
  It seems also to do it if you ask about something that's not documented in detail. It'll get details of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake dead on, but ask for the 1982 Bonin Island earthquake and apparently it was at a depth of 40km (it was actually 22.2), but it gets the magnitude right. The Nicobar Islands earthquake on 26 December the same year apparently killed 4000 with a magnitude of 7.1. It didn't, it injured 52, and there were two: magnitude 6.2 and 6.3. And it was in January. 26th December was indeed an earthquake that affected those islands. In 2004. Which is not that surprising, as how would it know, considering it probably didn't have much input about it. What is more amazing is the seamless blending of correctly regurgitated details with very plausible wholesale fabrication and, even more convincingly, blending of fact with fiction.

mwigdahl 4y ago

A lot of people say that the model is "lying" when it returns incorrect facts. Generally when friends or family confidently assert facts that they are sure but also incorrect about, we call them "misinformed" rather than connoting malice with the word "lying". Have they heard the right facts but associated them incorrectly? Heard the wrong facts from whatever source they obtained them from? Either or both could also be true of ChatGPT.

Miraste 4y ago
Yes, and either word is anthropomorphising. I stick with "lying" nonetheless, because if you start a conversation with "What color is the sun?" it returns a correct answer. It already has the association between "sun" and "white" in the model, but for whatever reason the context of my conversation made it say the sun is red. "Lying" seems to describe this behavior better than "misinformed."
Oxidation 4y ago
It's more like you can't actually read but you've seen a lot of media about cars that contain text saying they have a thing called a "width" around the 1.7-2m mark and usually aren't round numbers. So when someone asks you how wide a 2011[1] Ford Focus is[2], you say "1,769mm" and look confident. Syntactically right and by any probabilistic model, pretty good and plausible. [1] and if you ask for 2012, it tells you "I'm sorry, but I am not able to browse the internet to provide you with the specific dimensions of the 2012 Ford Focus." [2] according to Google results, it's 1823 mm to 1842 mm.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

I’ve only seen it do stuff like that if I assert a false premise and ask it questions off the false premise.

Oxidation 4y ago
It seems also to do it if you ask about something that's not documented in detail. It'll get details of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake dead on, but ask for the 1982 Bonin Island earthquake and apparently it was at a depth of 40km (it was actually 22.2), but it gets the magnitude right. The Nicobar Islands earthquake on 26 December the same year apparently killed 4000 with a magnitude of 7.1. It didn't, it injured 52, and there were two: magnitude 6.2 and 6.3. And it was in January. 26th December was indeed an earthquake that affected those islands. In 2004. Which is not that surprising, as how would it know, considering it probably didn't have much input about it. What is more amazing is the seamless blending of correctly regurgitated details with very plausible wholesale fabrication and, even more convincingly, blending of fact with fiction.