4 ms·

I see two big problems with GPT: 1. It presents information really well that is completely false. I don't know exactly how it works under the hood, but sometim

I see two big problems with GPT: 1. It presents information really well that is completely false. I don't know exactly how it works under the hood, but sometimes it spits out paragraphs that read like the fever dreams of a flat earther. 2. It will cause our communication skills to further atrophy. Maybe in an innocuous way (no one memorizes epic poems anymore), but with GPT I think it will make people less likely to have the ability to be persuasive.

alsodumb 4y ago
Regarding 1, it's well known that LLMs are pretty good at hallucinating.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  Regarding 2, it's well known that wetware online are already pretty bad at passing a persuasiveness turing test. (spellcheck means we no longer have to worry about getting distracted by orthography; if gpt means we no longer have to worry about getting distracted by grammar, I should hope we could then move on to helping people express actual ideas)
lm28469 4y ago
> It will cause our communication skills to further atrophy. Last week the dude next to me in the train asked chatgpt to generate a "good morning message" for his gf and sent it verbatim to her. At the same time he was working on what looked like a work related slide presentation, 90% of it was filled with chatgpt answers
- birdstheword5 4y ago
  I watched a dude in front of me at work make a whole PowerPoint using chatgpt, then used it to reply to all his emails - then back to copy pasting from chatgpt into some word doc
impalallama 4y ago
The more esoteric the information I'm asking the more likely it will tell me something that sounds right but all the specifics are wrong. As a test I asked for the world record speedrun for pokemon yellow, it made up a time associated with a runner who didn't exist yet the time was still rough 20 minute ballpark of what the any% time was in 2021. Bizarre stuff. I expect it will raise up a lot of writing to low bar of competent but voiceless. Which would actually be an improvement on many SEO spam blogs.
tester457 4y ago
Could what we consider persuasive change in the next 20 years? What if today's techniques are considered too crass and only perfectly crafted words by ai, finetuned with empathy for the person you are trying to persuade, is the only thing that works anymore?
drdaeman 4y ago
> It presents information really well that is completely false I don't really see a problem here. Us, meatbags have been at it for a few millennia, bullshitting for fun and profit, and that train is moving ever faster with the improvement of communication technologies. From what I've seen, this new rival isn't even exactly persuasive, it's merely super-confident (and we're giving it a lot of credit because we talk to it as a novelty machine). It has no malign (or benign) intent, no idea about where and how and where to put the pressure, and training for that (as opposed to training for a nice-looking texts that keep the topic and have a correct grammar) is something that must be very non-trivial. It doesn't even have any solid agenda besides a few silly filters and canned responses when it hits those. Though, of course, it can be trained for any certain bias. And maybe I'm too optimistic or naive, but I'm also guessing that if a future AI actually manages to becomes persuasive, then trained and unleashed onto conspiracy communities it very well could lead to their demise, outcrazing the craze to the extent it collapses into its own weight. Just let's not forget a kill-switch, lol.

alsodumb 4y ago

Regarding 1, it's well known that LLMs are pretty good at hallucinating.

082349872349872 4y ago
Regarding 2, it's well known that wetware online are already pretty bad at passing a persuasiveness turing test. (spellcheck means we no longer have to worry about getting distracted by orthography; if gpt means we no longer have to worry about getting distracted by grammar, I should hope we could then move on to helping people express actual ideas)

lm28469 4y ago

> It will cause our communication skills to further atrophy. Last week the dude next to me in the train asked chatgpt to generate a "good morning message" for his gf and sent it verbatim to her. At the same time he was working on what looked like a work related slide presentation, 90% of it was filled with chatgpt answers

birdstheword5 4y ago
I watched a dude in front of me at work make a whole PowerPoint using chatgpt, then used it to reply to all his emails - then back to copy pasting from chatgpt into some word doc

impalallama 4y ago

The more esoteric the information I'm asking the more likely it will tell me something that sounds right but all the specifics are wrong. As a test I asked for the world record speedrun for pokemon yellow, it made up a time associated with a runner who didn't exist yet the time was still rough 20 minute ballpark of what the any% time was in 2021. Bizarre stuff. I expect it will raise up a lot of writing to low bar of competent but voiceless. Which would actually be an improvement on many SEO spam blogs.

tester457 4y ago

Could what we consider persuasive change in the next 20 years? What if today's techniques are considered too crass and only perfectly crafted words by ai, finetuned with empathy for the person you are trying to persuade, is the only thing that works anymore?

drdaeman 4y ago

> It presents information really well that is completely false I don't really see a problem here. Us, meatbags have been at it for a few millennia, bullshitting for fun and profit, and that train is moving ever faster with the improvement of communication technologies. From what I've seen, this new rival isn't even exactly persuasive, it's merely super-confident (and we're giving it a lot of credit because we talk to it as a novelty machine). It has no malign (or benign) intent, no idea about where and how and where to put the pressure, and training for that (as opposed to training for a nice-looking texts that keep the topic and have a correct grammar) is something that must be very non-trivial. It doesn't even have any solid agenda besides a few silly filters and canned responses when it hits those. Though, of course, it can be trained for any certain bias. And maybe I'm too optimistic or naive, but I'm also guessing that if a future AI actually manages to becomes persuasive, then trained and unleashed onto conspiracy communities it very well could lead to their demise, outcrazing the craze to the extent it collapses into its own weight. Just let's not forget a kill-switch, lol.