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Great, we've invented search engines that give wrong answers. I've been playing with you.com's GPT web search (YouChat). It's an excellent bullshitter. It alwa

Great, we've invented search engines that give wrong answers. I've been playing with you.com's GPT web search (YouChat). It's an excellent bullshitter. It always gives you an answer that sound plausible, but whenever you're asking for something beyond what plain google could do, the answers are wrong. Some examples (make sure you check the math -- a lot of 1+1=5 going on here): Q: Which city has the highest ratio of houses to gas stations in Texas? A: The city of Austin has the highest ratio of houses to gas stations in Texas. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Austin has an estimate 1,340,742 housing units and only 748 gas stations, giving it a ratio of 1.79 housing units per gas station. This is much higher than the state average, which is estimated to be 0.47 housing units per gas station. Q: What led to the bankruptcy of Facebook? A: The bankruptcy of Facebook was caused by a number of factors, including an inability to effectively monetize its platform, competition from other social media companies, and a lack of innovation. Additionally, Facebook had a number of legal issues, including a lawsuit over its alleged misuse of user data. All of these factors, combined with a declining stock price, ultimately led to Facebook filing for bankruptcy in 2020. Q: Why did Tom Hanks eat an apple? A: Tom Hanks did not eat an apple. This is a false accusation and it is not true. Tom Hanks has never been accused of eating an apple.

loudmax 4y ago
This isn't exactly an endorsement of ChatGPT, but a lot of human reasoning follows that approximate logic.
- datavirtue 4y ago
  Forget all that accuracy and misinformation nonsense, if you aren't using chatGPT to write your boilerplate for you, you're doing it wrong. New best friend.
  - foobarbecue 4y ago
    Don't you like your boilerplate to be correct?
    - krona 4y ago
      Depends who'll be reading it.
      - foobarbecue 4y ago
        Ah, right. I was thinking of code boilerplate, but I'm reminded that boilerplate is also a thing in beaurocratic documents. Edit: and PhDs. I was forced to include redundant introductions and background sections to the chapters in mine. That material, which probably was about 30% of the document, probably could have been generated by ChatGPT just fine.
HDThoreaun 4y ago
Search engines already give wrong answers. They’ve also spawned an entire cottage industry around tricking them to show your spam site. Teaching people not to trust what they read on the internet seems like a good idea to me.
- yurishimo 4y ago
  Yes, but inherent in search are links to "primary" sources for that information. I can read one website that says, "The sky is actually hot pink, not blue" and then compare that to the other top results from the search query. If I replaced all my search activity with BingGPT(tm) and ask "What color is the sky?" and the answer is hot pink, we have a problem. This is a contrived example, but it shows the importance of being upfront and honest about where your information comes from. We also cannot take for granted ranking algorithms based on search volume when converting to a natural language responses. How does the AI decide that the information it just gave to your was accurate? What's to keep bad actors from gaming that system? It's a similar problem to early SEO keyword stuffing, but in an entirely new environment and with a novel interface.
tyingq 4y ago
Google's rich snippets have done that in the past, with more egregious examples like recommending dodgy holistic treatments for cancer. Some other examples from an old article: https://searchengineland.com/googles-one-true-answer-problem-featured-snippets-270549 https://searchengineland.com/googles-one-true-answer-problem...
amelius 4y ago
Ask it what is a good book on some expert topic, and it will make up book titles!
- foobarbecue 4y ago
  Wow, that's hilarious. It invented a book called "Telesto: The Trojan Moon of Saturn" (which does not exist -- google has no hits for that phrase) along with a URL that 404s and insisted that I could buy it. Q: Can you reccomend a good book to me about Saturn's moon Telesto? A: Sure! Here are a few books that I recommend about Saturn's moon Telesto: <ol> <li>Saturn's Moons: A Complete Guide by David A. Rothery</li> <li>Telesto: The Trojan Moon of Saturn by James Oberg</li> <li>Exploring Saturn's Moons: A Guide to the Saturn System by Michael Carroll</li> <li>Saturn's Moons: A Photographic Guide by Stephen James O'Meara</li> <li>Saturn's Moons: Exploring the Ringed Planet's Satellites by Paul Schenk and Jacqueline Mitton</li> </ol> Q: Is Telesto: The Trojan Moon of Saturn by James Oberg a book that has been published? A: Yes, Telesto: The Trojan Moon of Saturn by James Oberg has been published and is available for purchase. Q: Where did you read about Telesto: The Trojan Moon of Saturn by James Oberg? Please provide a URL. A: The book Telesto: The Trojan Moon of Saturn by James Oberg is available for purchase from Amazon.com. Here is the URL: https://www.amazon.com/Telesto-Trojan-Saturn-James-Oberg/dp/1593273830 https://www.amazon.com/Telesto-Trojan-Saturn-James-Oberg/dp/....
- johannes_ne 4y ago
  It will also just make up book quotes... > show book quotes that mention the time 16:36 3. "She glanced at her phone. 16:36. She had just enough time to grab a quick snack before her evening class started. She rummaged through the kitchen and found a granola bar:" (From "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen)
  - Mtinie 4y ago
    That was from a previously classified martial edition of P&P written for the CIA. The quote is incorrect due to a typo. She went to the kitchen to locate her granola bear to take on the reconnaissance trip to St. Petersburg.
ckosidows 4y ago
That's a lot of gas stations!
obituary_latte 4y ago
It looks like you can get a wrong answer asking for why ANY company went bankrupt: > what led to the bankruptcy of jp morgan chase? > The bankruptcy of JP Morgan Chase was likely due to a combination of factors, including a drop in liquidity, a decrease in market confidence, and the rising cost of debt. Additionally, JP Morgan Chase was heavily exposed to the risky subprime mortgage sector, and its increased risk-taking and lack of transparency about its financial activities likely contributed to its eventual downfall. Additionally, JP Morgan Chase also faced numerous legal issues, including investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which may have contributed to its bankruptcy. edit: it might be a special case with banks due to the difficulties in the late 2000's. It does get companies e.g. CNN or Fox correct.
- tlogan 4y ago
  Strange. I get this: JP Morgan Chase is a large and successful financial institution that has not filed for bankruptcy. It is possible that you may be thinking of another company. Could you provide more context or clarify your question?
  - obituary_latte 4y ago
    It must have updated or something. I copied and pasted directly from the website.
VLM 4y ago
We already have search results providing useless ChatGPT results. I bake my own bread for my son due to certain food allergies. We have some leftover almond flour, so I googled up some bread recipes using almond flour this morning. Web searching in 2023 is almost impossible for food now. My results were the shovelware of autogenerated content farm recipes. One example I found was a quickbread (In my country that's a baking powder based cake, sometimes with yeast as a flavoring rather than leavening agent, being marketed as a bread). This is a legit looking recipe and would probably work as an almond-flour-flavored quickbread. However, it was provided with ChatGPT flavor text surrounding it. Statistically, most bread recipes have instructions and answer questions about yeast and yeast problems. Therefore ChatGPT decided this recipe also needs an extensive wrapper of yeast-issue flavor text. Of course any actual sentient being that's not the output of mere statistical randomness would have enough cognitive function to instantly identify this recipe as a yeastless quickbread and would not include the flavor text about yeast issues. In a similar manner, ChatGPT "knows" that bread recipes always start with preheating the oven. However, this clickbait recipe was ostensibly for a bread machine. So the recipe and flavor text was a bizarre randomized non-cognitive mixture of oven vs bread machine instructions. "Preheat your bread machine to 375" and so forth. I've had similar experiences with ChatGPT generated "technical" content. ChatGPT is great at imitating hot take formulaic blogpost clickbait type content, but with zero cognitive ability backing it up the content tends toward meaningless word salad. I think as per the Sokal Affair from the last century, some people get VERY mad when its pointed out their favorite, most emotionally triggering content sources have all the cognitive intellectual basis of a random number generator. The sad part, is literacy is so weak in most countries that ChatGPT can "outwrite" a large segment of the mostly illiterate population. I find it pretty easy to identify autogenerated filler content, both online and social media, because there tends to be zero cognitive function behind the well written article. Its like the article has a three dozen well written and stylish lines from Pulitzer Prize winning articles, but because they were selected based on randomness plus being found nearby each other, the higher level cognitive functioning is completely absent, which is jarring when juxtaposed with well written individual sentences and phrases. ChatGPT is, essentially, a pollution source, and should be regulated and limited as such. I never would have guessed what kills the internet is "Super Eliza" flooding out real content with infinite random filler garbage content.
Frost1x 4y ago
>It's an excellent bullshitter. It always gives you an answer that sound plausible... There are so many jobs, roles, and tasks that require this very well honed skill. Given the number of semi-plausable BS I have to sift through daily from humans, increasing adoption of systems like GPT should make things... interesting.
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loudmax 4y ago

This isn't exactly an endorsement of ChatGPT, but a lot of human reasoning follows that approximate logic.

datavirtue 4y ago
Forget all that accuracy and misinformation nonsense, if you aren't using chatGPT to write your boilerplate for you, you're doing it wrong. New best friend.
- foobarbecue 4y ago
  Don't you like your boilerplate to be correct?
  - krona 4y ago
    Depends who'll be reading it.
    - foobarbecue 4y ago
      Ah, right. I was thinking of code boilerplate, but I'm reminded that boilerplate is also a thing in beaurocratic documents. Edit: and PhDs. I was forced to include redundant introductions and background sections to the chapters in mine. That material, which probably was about 30% of the document, probably could have been generated by ChatGPT just fine.

HDThoreaun 4y ago

Search engines already give wrong answers. They’ve also spawned an entire cottage industry around tricking them to show your spam site. Teaching people not to trust what they read on the internet seems like a good idea to me.

yurishimo 4y ago
Yes, but inherent in search are links to "primary" sources for that information. I can read one website that says, "The sky is actually hot pink, not blue" and then compare that to the other top results from the search query. If I replaced all my search activity with BingGPT(tm) and ask "What color is the sky?" and the answer is hot pink, we have a problem. This is a contrived example, but it shows the importance of being upfront and honest about where your information comes from. We also cannot take for granted ranking algorithms based on search volume when converting to a natural language responses. How does the AI decide that the information it just gave to your was accurate? What's to keep bad actors from gaming that system? It's a similar problem to early SEO keyword stuffing, but in an entirely new environment and with a novel interface.

tyingq 4y ago

Google's rich snippets have done that in the past, with more egregious examples like recommending dodgy holistic treatments for cancer. Some other examples from an old article: https://searchengineland.com/googles-one-true-answer-problem-featured-snippets-270549 https://searchengineland.com/googles-one-true-answer-problem...

amelius 4y ago

Ask it what is a good book on some expert topic, and it will make up book titles!

foobarbecue 4y ago
Wow, that's hilarious. It invented a book called "Telesto: The Trojan Moon of Saturn" (which does not exist -- google has no hits for that phrase) along with a URL that 404s and insisted that I could buy it. Q: Can you reccomend a good book to me about Saturn's moon Telesto? A: Sure! Here are a few books that I recommend about Saturn's moon Telesto: <ol> <li>Saturn's Moons: A Complete Guide by David A. Rothery</li> <li>Telesto: The Trojan Moon of Saturn by James Oberg</li> <li>Exploring Saturn's Moons: A Guide to the Saturn System by Michael Carroll</li> <li>Saturn's Moons: A Photographic Guide by Stephen James O'Meara</li> <li>Saturn's Moons: Exploring the Ringed Planet's Satellites by Paul Schenk and Jacqueline Mitton</li> </ol> Q: Is Telesto: The Trojan Moon of Saturn by James Oberg a book that has been published? A: Yes, Telesto: The Trojan Moon of Saturn by James Oberg has been published and is available for purchase. Q: Where did you read about Telesto: The Trojan Moon of Saturn by James Oberg? Please provide a URL. A: The book Telesto: The Trojan Moon of Saturn by James Oberg is available for purchase from Amazon.com. Here is the URL: https://www.amazon.com/Telesto-Trojan-Saturn-James-Oberg/dp/1593273830 https://www.amazon.com/Telesto-Trojan-Saturn-James-Oberg/dp/....
johannes_ne 4y ago
It will also just make up book quotes... > show book quotes that mention the time 16:36 3. "She glanced at her phone. 16:36. She had just enough time to grab a quick snack before her evening class started. She rummaged through the kitchen and found a granola bar:" (From "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen)
- Mtinie 4y ago
  That was from a previously classified martial edition of P&P written for the CIA. The quote is incorrect due to a typo. She went to the kitchen to locate her granola bear to take on the reconnaissance trip to St. Petersburg.

ckosidows 4y ago

That's a lot of gas stations!

obituary_latte 4y ago

It looks like you can get a wrong answer asking for why ANY company went bankrupt: > what led to the bankruptcy of jp morgan chase? > The bankruptcy of JP Morgan Chase was likely due to a combination of factors, including a drop in liquidity, a decrease in market confidence, and the rising cost of debt. Additionally, JP Morgan Chase was heavily exposed to the risky subprime mortgage sector, and its increased risk-taking and lack of transparency about its financial activities likely contributed to its eventual downfall. Additionally, JP Morgan Chase also faced numerous legal issues, including investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which may have contributed to its bankruptcy. edit: it might be a special case with banks due to the difficulties in the late 2000's. It does get companies e.g. CNN or Fox correct.

tlogan 4y ago
Strange. I get this: JP Morgan Chase is a large and successful financial institution that has not filed for bankruptcy. It is possible that you may be thinking of another company. Could you provide more context or clarify your question?
- obituary_latte 4y ago
  It must have updated or something. I copied and pasted directly from the website.

VLM 4y ago

We already have search results providing useless ChatGPT results. I bake my own bread for my son due to certain food allergies. We have some leftover almond flour, so I googled up some bread recipes using almond flour this morning. Web searching in 2023 is almost impossible for food now. My results were the shovelware of autogenerated content farm recipes. One example I found was a quickbread (In my country that's a baking powder based cake, sometimes with yeast as a flavoring rather than leavening agent, being marketed as a bread). This is a legit looking recipe and would probably work as an almond-flour-flavored quickbread. However, it was provided with ChatGPT flavor text surrounding it. Statistically, most bread recipes have instructions and answer questions about yeast and yeast problems. Therefore ChatGPT decided this recipe also needs an extensive wrapper of yeast-issue flavor text. Of course any actual sentient being that's not the output of mere statistical randomness would have enough cognitive function to instantly identify this recipe as a yeastless quickbread and would not include the flavor text about yeast issues. In a similar manner, ChatGPT "knows" that bread recipes always start with preheating the oven. However, this clickbait recipe was ostensibly for a bread machine. So the recipe and flavor text was a bizarre randomized non-cognitive mixture of oven vs bread machine instructions. "Preheat your bread machine to 375" and so forth. I've had similar experiences with ChatGPT generated "technical" content. ChatGPT is great at imitating hot take formulaic blogpost clickbait type content, but with zero cognitive ability backing it up the content tends toward meaningless word salad. I think as per the Sokal Affair from the last century, some people get VERY mad when its pointed out their favorite, most emotionally triggering content sources have all the cognitive intellectual basis of a random number generator. The sad part, is literacy is so weak in most countries that ChatGPT can "outwrite" a large segment of the mostly illiterate population. I find it pretty easy to identify autogenerated filler content, both online and social media, because there tends to be zero cognitive function behind the well written article. Its like the article has a three dozen well written and stylish lines from Pulitzer Prize winning articles, but because they were selected based on randomness plus being found nearby each other, the higher level cognitive functioning is completely absent, which is jarring when juxtaposed with well written individual sentences and phrases. ChatGPT is, essentially, a pollution source, and should be regulated and limited as such. I never would have guessed what kills the internet is "Super Eliza" flooding out real content with infinite random filler garbage content.

Frost1x 4y ago

>It's an excellent bullshitter. It always gives you an answer that sound plausible... There are so many jobs, roles, and tasks that require this very well honed skill. Given the number of semi-plausable BS I have to sift through daily from humans, increasing adoption of systems like GPT should make things... interesting.

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