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Bard was potentially "correct" though. The JWST was indeed "the first telescope to observe a exoplanet [etc]". That planet was LHS 475 b. The interpretation

Bard was potentially "correct" though. The JWST was indeed "the first telescope to observe a exoplanet [etc]". That planet was LHS 475 b. The interpretation of "a exoplanet" as "LHS 475 b" would make it correct. The interpretation of "a exoplanet" as "any exoplanet" would make it incorrect. We cannot know what it's intention was with the meaning, and arguably it was a bad answer if it was this ambiguous. Just wanted to point out it may technically have been correct.

moyix 4y ago
I've seen this justification in a few places now, but the logic makes zero sense if you apply it to any other similar sentence: "I was the first person to make a comment on Hacker News" [this comment, specifically]
- hgsgm 4y ago
  It's a grammatical ambiguity. Your example is nonsense because a comment only ever has one author.
DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
> We cannot know what it's intention was with the meaning, and arguably it was a bad answer if it was this ambiguous. I undertand that LLM systems don't have "intentions" though.
tablespoon 4y ago
> Just wanted to point out it may technically have been correct. It's not correct in any sense if you have to torture the statement like you did to extract something correct or see the answer as ambiguous. In that context, "a[n] exoplanet" just plain means "any exoplanet."
- hgsgm 4y ago
  How would you describe what JWST did, in simple language, without the ponderous name of the planet?
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    Probably "there is an exoplanet that was first observed by JWST." However, there's very little actual linguistic need to express "JWST was the first telescope to observe exoplanet LHS 475b," without actually naming the planet or adding some other unique condition. Realistically, the way you'd express this fact with reasonable utility is "LHS 475b was first observed by JWST," or "the first exoplanet observed by JWST was LHS 475b."

moyix 4y ago

I've seen this justification in a few places now, but the logic makes zero sense if you apply it to any other similar sentence: "I was the first person to make a comment on Hacker News" [this comment, specifically]

hgsgm 4y ago
It's a grammatical ambiguity. Your example is nonsense because a comment only ever has one author.

DaiPlusPlus 4y ago

> We cannot know what it's intention was with the meaning, and arguably it was a bad answer if it was this ambiguous. I undertand that LLM systems don't have "intentions" though.

tablespoon 4y ago

> Just wanted to point out it may technically have been correct. It's not correct in any sense if you have to torture the statement like you did to extract something correct or see the answer as ambiguous. In that context, "a[n] exoplanet" just plain means "any exoplanet."

hgsgm 4y ago
How would you describe what JWST did, in simple language, without the ponderous name of the planet?
- tablespoon 4y ago
  Probably "there is an exoplanet that was first observed by JWST." However, there's very little actual linguistic need to express "JWST was the first telescope to observe exoplanet LHS 475b," without actually naming the planet or adding some other unique condition. Realistically, the way you'd express this fact with reasonable utility is "LHS 475b was first observed by JWST," or "the first exoplanet observed by JWST was LHS 475b."