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Really interesting to hear your experiences. I guess it makes sense; why would ChatGPT be able to give detailed answers about the contents of books if it's only

by joe__f 4y ago

Really interesting to hear your experiences. I guess it makes sense; why would ChatGPT be able to give detailed answers about the contents of books if it's only read summaries etc. posted on the internet It sounds like an important next step is to work out how to get it to estimate how much it knows about a given topic, and be clear about that in its answers. I think that's a key difference between someone who's well read on various different topics and someone who's trying to bullshit you

jackbrookes 4y ago
Part of its training data includes books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3#Training_and_capabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3#Training_and_capabilitie...
- joe__f 4y ago
  Do I now fall into the category of people who are bullshitting because they didn't do their reading properly?
notahacker 4y ago
> I guess it makes sense; why would ChatGPT be able to give detailed answers about the contents of books if it's only read summaries etc. posted on the internet The more interesting thing is if it's read loads of summaries on the internet but they aren't particularly consistent. So ChatGPT has access to plenty of summaries of Gravity's Rainbow, but as it's a complex book with an ensemble cast and there's relatively little overlap between what human reviewers wrote were the standout moments and key themes of the book, ChatGPT tells me that it has seven chapters, each named after the colours of the rainbow instead. This isn't remotely close to being true (arguably Gravity's Rainbow contains so many themes and interpretations that being able to come up with a summary of what happens which is unambiguously false is an accomplishment!), but if you're a word model then "colours of the rainbow" and "sections... each named after" matches well to the theme "Rainbow" which appears to be a book and is syntactically valid, and none of the individual plot elements mentioned in reviews of the book are necessarily a better match tbf, ChatGPT is much better than most bots at recognising prompts it shouldn't be able to respond to and giving "I cannot offer specific advice on..." boilerplate responses; someone's invested a lot of effort training it to do that (and possibly also discouraged it from mentioning any of the sex and drug elements of Gravity's Rainbow). But it bullshits by default.

by joe__f 4y ago

jackbrookes 4y ago

Part of its training data includes books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3#Training_and_capabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3#Training_and_capabilitie...

joe__f 4y ago
Do I now fall into the category of people who are bullshitting because they didn't do their reading properly?

notahacker 4y ago

> I guess it makes sense; why would ChatGPT be able to give detailed answers about the contents of books if it's only read summaries etc. posted on the internet The more interesting thing is if it's read loads of summaries on the internet but they aren't particularly consistent. So ChatGPT has access to plenty of summaries of Gravity's Rainbow, but as it's a complex book with an ensemble cast and there's relatively little overlap between what human reviewers wrote were the standout moments and key themes of the book, ChatGPT tells me that it has seven chapters, each named after the colours of the rainbow instead. This isn't remotely close to being true (arguably Gravity's Rainbow contains so many themes and interpretations that being able to come up with a summary of what happens which is unambiguously false is an accomplishment!), but if you're a word model then "colours of the rainbow" and "sections... each named after" matches well to the theme "Rainbow" which appears to be a book and is syntactically valid, and none of the individual plot elements mentioned in reviews of the book are necessarily a better match tbf, ChatGPT is much better than most bots at recognising prompts it shouldn't be able to respond to and giving "I cannot offer specific advice on..." boilerplate responses; someone's invested a lot of effort training it to do that (and possibly also discouraged it from mentioning any of the sex and drug elements of Gravity's Rainbow). But it bullshits by default.