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> it should increase the quality of writing overall if people start taking advantage of these tools Perversely, it might also dramatically decrease reading, if

> it should increase the quality of writing overall if people start taking advantage of these tools Perversely, it might also dramatically decrease reading, if there's no incentive for anyone to need to properly understand anything. A pretty dire scenario :(

Gigachad 4y ago
It's probably going to devalue memorizing facts and concepts in the same way the internet already has, although to a further extent. This could be really exciting as everyone now has a subject matter expert on hand to ask any question they could think of.
- goatlover 4y ago
  Subject matter exports are quick to point out the limitations and flaws of chatGPT in their domain of expertise.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    I expect in a few years we will have versions that are both more accurate, and can cite their answers / do real research.
    - simonh 4y ago
      I think that's unlikely. The architecture these things currently use doesn't allow for the possibility of that. We'd need to engineer systems with a very different architecture in order to do it. So yes maybe eventually, sure, but we're a long way from that.
    - ilaksh 4y ago
      You can search a knowledgebase using embeddings today and it works pretty well.
- logifail 4y ago
  > It's probably going to devalue memorizing facts and concepts in the same way the internet already has [..] OK, thought experiment: try to think of the brightest people you know/ever knew. Not the most successful, but the ones where after every interaction you were left thinking "wow, person X is really, really smart". I can think of a handful of people from over the decades, who worked in wildly different fields. All of them were really good at recalling facts and at quickly grasping concepts. None of them ever needed anything explaining (or even saying!) twice. Note: this isn't about people who excel at rote learning (like you might do for a school test), just there are people out there who are simply great at absorbing information. ChatGPT isn't that, and my prediction is that it will never be that. People who are great at writing prompts for ChatGPT aren't going to be that, either.
  - hfbff 4y ago
    >People who are great at writing prompts for ChatGPT aren't going to be that, either. I don't see why this would be true. If you have evidence of some strong argument on why this would be true, I'd like to hear them. As an anecdote, I work with young people (x<25) that don't seem to be worse at recalling facts than the older generation. The bright/geeky ones grew up reading up wikipedia and, in fact, have a wider grasp of facts/stories than the older generation (in my experience)
lmm 4y ago
Maybe it'll force people to state their points clearly and avoid bullshitting, if no-one is willing to wade through unclear paragraphs. That might have a positive effect in the long run.

Gigachad 4y ago

It's probably going to devalue memorizing facts and concepts in the same way the internet already has, although to a further extent. This could be really exciting as everyone now has a subject matter expert on hand to ask any question they could think of.

goatlover 4y ago
Subject matter exports are quick to point out the limitations and flaws of chatGPT in their domain of expertise.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  I expect in a few years we will have versions that are both more accurate, and can cite their answers / do real research.
  - simonh 4y ago
    I think that's unlikely. The architecture these things currently use doesn't allow for the possibility of that. We'd need to engineer systems with a very different architecture in order to do it. So yes maybe eventually, sure, but we're a long way from that.
  - ilaksh 4y ago
    You can search a knowledgebase using embeddings today and it works pretty well.
logifail 4y ago
> It's probably going to devalue memorizing facts and concepts in the same way the internet already has [..] OK, thought experiment: try to think of the brightest people you know/ever knew. Not the most successful, but the ones where after every interaction you were left thinking "wow, person X is really, really smart". I can think of a handful of people from over the decades, who worked in wildly different fields. All of them were really good at recalling facts and at quickly grasping concepts. None of them ever needed anything explaining (or even saying!) twice. Note: this isn't about people who excel at rote learning (like you might do for a school test), just there are people out there who are simply great at absorbing information. ChatGPT isn't that, and my prediction is that it will never be that. People who are great at writing prompts for ChatGPT aren't going to be that, either.
- hfbff 4y ago
  >People who are great at writing prompts for ChatGPT aren't going to be that, either. I don't see why this would be true. If you have evidence of some strong argument on why this would be true, I'd like to hear them. As an anecdote, I work with young people (x<25) that don't seem to be worse at recalling facts than the older generation. The bright/geeky ones grew up reading up wikipedia and, in fact, have a wider grasp of facts/stories than the older generation (in my experience)

lmm 4y ago

Maybe it'll force people to state their points clearly and avoid bullshitting, if no-one is willing to wade through unclear paragraphs. That might have a positive effect in the long run.