8 ms·

I have to check Bing's sources when I use it anyway, because what it says is often simply wrong. I asked it what my local cafeteria had on its lunch menu today

by erinnh 4y ago

I have to check Bing's sources when I use it anyway, because what it says is often simply wrong. I asked it what my local cafeteria had on its lunch menu today. It answered with full confidence. It turns out, it was completely wrong though. It had mixed the lunch options and completely hallucinated another one. Stuff like this just makes me really wary using it. I have to fact check everything every time and for more complicated things I cant be sure if *I* am correct.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
You can't get correct answers from an LLM for most things you'd want to ask it. It's useful for predicting the future with some level of error that's probably better than you could do on some topic you know little about - and for generating text in the style of someone else about some subject where accuracy doesn't matter. That's pretty much it. Until LLMs work different, Chat-GPT - even if it gets to version 9000 - is never going to be able to tell you what's on the menu today at Chez Panisse, unless they build in some API for Chez Panisse to answer that query direction - in which case, you're not really using AI at all...
- Karunamon 4y ago
  This assertion is easily disproven by about five minutes of using even GPT3, and more quantitatively, by 4's documented results on standardized testing. I'm not sure what kinds of questions you are asking in order to make broad statements like "You can't get correct answers from an LLM for most things you'd want to ask it", but this is so far off base from both the research, the documentation, and my own experience that I think we're talking about two different things. Please stop with the middlebrow dismissal, doubly so when the dismissals aren't even accurate.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    If you need correct information - it's not really useful at all if something is mostly correct 95% of the time. If you don't need correct information, ChatGPT is great.
    - Karunamon 4y ago
      And what is the accuracy rate of the average Google search? Are you applying this extreme level of skepticism to everything you search for or only to LLM output? I've seen this pattern enough times here that it's actually becoming infuriating for how bad faith it is. Look, we both know that there is a gradient on how people use the information they receive. On one side of that scale is how you claim LLM's work, bullshit generators that are wrong so often they are not useful, and so regularly everything you read is presumed bullshit – except applied to everything. On the other side of that scale is homo credulus, a fictional sub species of human that blithely accepts anything they are told without checking it against anything, be it common sense, their own working model of the world, other information, anything. They just take it and run with it. Neither of these approaches are useful and neither of them match reality. I am asking, begging you even, to knock it off already. The hyperbole you are spouting is not useful and it is demonstrably not correct.
      - sebzim4500 4y ago
        > And what is the accuracy rate of the average Google search? Probably more than 99%, certainly more than ChatGPT. Haven't used GPT-4 though so maybe that even the gap.
        siva7 4y ago
        So the more than 99% comes exactly where from? Some gut feeling?
    - siva7 4y ago
      Oh boy how i wish the information i find on Google, Wikipedia, etc. were mostly correct 95% of the time. 95% is actually a fantastic goal to strive for to gain something useful from your own research. Only a fool would assume to have 100% correct information from a quick search.
      - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
        ChatGPT isn't even at 70%.
- juretriglav 4y ago
  Hm, I'm not entirely sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but just in case, asking Bing about the menu I get this: > Chez Panisse is a famous restaurant in Berkeley, California that serves seasonal and organic food1. The menu changes daily and is posted on their website2. Today’s menu for the restaurant (not the cafe) is: > Fennel and leek salad with rocket, toasted almonds, and salsa verde > Bomba rice cooked with clams and squid; with aïoli > Becker Lane Farm pork loin roasted with Spanish paprika and green garlic; with > braised greens and wild mushrooms > Meyer lemon sherbet with candied kumquats > The price for this menu is $175 per person2. That seems to be correct.
  - karpierz 4y ago
    Where do you see "Meyer lemon sherbet with candied kumquats" on the menu? https://www.chezpanisse.com/1/restaurantmenu/ https://www.chezpanisse.com/1/restaurantmenu/ This is what's there for today: - Fennel and leek salad with rocket, toasted almonds, and salsa verde - Bomba rice cooked with clams and squid; with aïoli - Becker Lane Farm pork loin roasted with Spanish paprika and green garlic; with braised greens and wild mushrooms - Blood orange and vanilla ice creams with Page mandarins
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- IanCal 4y ago
  Bing chat searches an index of the web, then takes that information as context to answer your questions. You don't need a custom API if your machines can read human text accurately.
LeoPanthera 4y ago
> I have to check Bing's sources when I use it anyway, because what it says is often simply wrong. But at least it gives you the sources, unlike ChatGPT. (And, at least in my experience so far, it is not "often" wrong all. I've had good results.)
- erinnh 4y ago
  Yes and I like that Bing gives it's sources. But I also find it rather fatiguing to have to check the sources every time. I also don't know for sure if the times it gave me correct answer were actually correct or if I simply didn't catch the mistake?
- strangetortoise 4y ago
  I have heard this type of reply to this remark (from my side) a few times now. It has made me curious: Are you a type of person that often checks the sources on Wikipedia? Anecdotally: I know that Wikipedia is not always correct. But I feel like I can build an intuition and reason on what pages I can reasonably trust on Wikipedia, since in my experience, the inaccurate bits I have encountered tend to be in certain categories. However it's much harder to feel confident about my intuition about ChatGPTs' correctness, since my exposure has led me to believe that the hallucinations are fairly random, and not concentrated in particular topics. This makes the tool much less attractive for me, as I feel like I need to double check every written word. Perhaps I should be less trustful of Wikipedia...
  - LeoPanthera 4y ago
    > Are you a type of person that often checks the sources on Wikipedia? Well, as a semi-regular editor on Wikipedia, I'm probably the wrong person to ask.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
    when the claims on Wikipedia are outlandish.. yeah i check the source.
macrolocal 4y ago
> I have to check Bing's sources when I use it anyway, because what it says is often simply wrong. Checking sources is a great habit to develop!

by erinnh 4y ago

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

You can't get correct answers from an LLM for most things you'd want to ask it. It's useful for predicting the future with some level of error that's probably better than you could do on some topic you know little about - and for generating text in the style of someone else about some subject where accuracy doesn't matter. That's pretty much it. Until LLMs work different, Chat-GPT - even if it gets to version 9000 - is never going to be able to tell you what's on the menu today at Chez Panisse, unless they build in some API for Chez Panisse to answer that query direction - in which case, you're not really using AI at all...

Karunamon 4y ago
This assertion is easily disproven by about five minutes of using even GPT3, and more quantitatively, by 4's documented results on standardized testing. I'm not sure what kinds of questions you are asking in order to make broad statements like "You can't get correct answers from an LLM for most things you'd want to ask it", but this is so far off base from both the research, the documentation, and my own experience that I think we're talking about two different things. Please stop with the middlebrow dismissal, doubly so when the dismissals aren't even accurate.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  If you need correct information - it's not really useful at all if something is mostly correct 95% of the time. If you don't need correct information, ChatGPT is great.
  - Karunamon 4y ago
    And what is the accuracy rate of the average Google search? Are you applying this extreme level of skepticism to everything you search for or only to LLM output? I've seen this pattern enough times here that it's actually becoming infuriating for how bad faith it is. Look, we both know that there is a gradient on how people use the information they receive. On one side of that scale is how you claim LLM's work, bullshit generators that are wrong so often they are not useful, and so regularly everything you read is presumed bullshit – except applied to everything. On the other side of that scale is homo credulus, a fictional sub species of human that blithely accepts anything they are told without checking it against anything, be it common sense, their own working model of the world, other information, anything. They just take it and run with it. Neither of these approaches are useful and neither of them match reality. I am asking, begging you even, to knock it off already. The hyperbole you are spouting is not useful and it is demonstrably not correct.
    - sebzim4500 4y ago
      > And what is the accuracy rate of the average Google search? Probably more than 99%, certainly more than ChatGPT. Haven't used GPT-4 though so maybe that even the gap.
      - siva7 4y ago
        So the more than 99% comes exactly where from? Some gut feeling?
  - siva7 4y ago
    Oh boy how i wish the information i find on Google, Wikipedia, etc. were mostly correct 95% of the time. 95% is actually a fantastic goal to strive for to gain something useful from your own research. Only a fool would assume to have 100% correct information from a quick search.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
      ChatGPT isn't even at 70%.
juretriglav 4y ago
Hm, I'm not entirely sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but just in case, asking Bing about the menu I get this: > Chez Panisse is a famous restaurant in Berkeley, California that serves seasonal and organic food1. The menu changes daily and is posted on their website2. Today’s menu for the restaurant (not the cafe) is: > Fennel and leek salad with rocket, toasted almonds, and salsa verde > Bomba rice cooked with clams and squid; with aïoli > Becker Lane Farm pork loin roasted with Spanish paprika and green garlic; with > braised greens and wild mushrooms > Meyer lemon sherbet with candied kumquats > The price for this menu is $175 per person2. That seems to be correct.
- karpierz 4y ago
  Where do you see "Meyer lemon sherbet with candied kumquats" on the menu? https://www.chezpanisse.com/1/restaurantmenu/ https://www.chezpanisse.com/1/restaurantmenu/ This is what's there for today: - Fennel and leek salad with rocket, toasted almonds, and salsa verde - Bomba rice cooked with clams and squid; with aïoli - Becker Lane Farm pork loin roasted with Spanish paprika and green garlic; with braised greens and wild mushrooms - Blood orange and vanilla ice creams with Page mandarins
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
IanCal 4y ago
Bing chat searches an index of the web, then takes that information as context to answer your questions. You don't need a custom API if your machines can read human text accurately.

LeoPanthera 4y ago

> I have to check Bing's sources when I use it anyway, because what it says is often simply wrong. But at least it gives you the sources, unlike ChatGPT. (And, at least in my experience so far, it is not "often" wrong all. I've had good results.)

erinnh 4y ago
Yes and I like that Bing gives it's sources. But I also find it rather fatiguing to have to check the sources every time. I also don't know for sure if the times it gave me correct answer were actually correct or if I simply didn't catch the mistake?
strangetortoise 4y ago
I have heard this type of reply to this remark (from my side) a few times now. It has made me curious: Are you a type of person that often checks the sources on Wikipedia? Anecdotally: I know that Wikipedia is not always correct. But I feel like I can build an intuition and reason on what pages I can reasonably trust on Wikipedia, since in my experience, the inaccurate bits I have encountered tend to be in certain categories. However it's much harder to feel confident about my intuition about ChatGPTs' correctness, since my exposure has led me to believe that the hallucinations are fairly random, and not concentrated in particular topics. This makes the tool much less attractive for me, as I feel like I need to double check every written word. Perhaps I should be less trustful of Wikipedia...
- LeoPanthera 4y ago
  > Are you a type of person that often checks the sources on Wikipedia? Well, as a semi-regular editor on Wikipedia, I'm probably the wrong person to ask.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
  when the claims on Wikipedia are outlandish.. yeah i check the source.

macrolocal 4y ago

> I have to check Bing's sources when I use it anyway, because what it says is often simply wrong. Checking sources is a great habit to develop!