5 ms·

I always tell people that if they want learn more about the hype to just try and use it to do actual work. Almost no one ever does, but when they do it becomes

I always tell people that if they want learn more about the hype to just try and use it to do actual work. Almost no one ever does, but when they do it becomes almost immediately clear how limited it is and what it is and isn’t good for.

jstanley 4y ago
It's good at writing. It's not good at knowing facts. If you give it all the relevant facts and ask it to do a writeup in a certain style it does a better first draft than a typical human, and in a lot less time. If you ask it what the facts are, it just gives you a load of nonsense.
- asgerhb 4y ago
  Even this is not always the case. I gave it a very rough draft and it actually made my structure worse, while at the same time using imprecise language. It looked like the correct style, but the content was not salvageable.
Abroszka 4y ago
I use it almost every day for work. It has mostly replaced Google for me. A lot more convenient. Now whenever I use Google it's more or less just to look up the address of a specific site.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Well, google has become utterly bad at its job — I fail to find sites I remember verbatim quotes from, so expert google-usage is no longer a possibility. It will gladly leave out any of your important keywords, even if you add quotes around it, absolutely useless. Sure, the average person will search for “how old is X” not “x age”, but for more complex queries the first form is not a good fit. That said, I can’t really use ChatGPT as a search engine, but I did plug it into a self-hosted telegram bot and I do ask it some basic questions from time to time - telegram is a good UI for it.
  - Abroszka 4y ago
    Yeah, I agree. Google did a lot of work to make ChatGPT useful. It's clearly worse than it used to be. I usually need someone to explain something to me. And I used Google before to land on a site where I could find the explanation (e.g. how to use a library). ChatGPT can explain most things I need and I can skip Google and the other sites. But it's indeed not a search engine, if you need factual information then your best bet is to find the documentations, articles, databases, etc.
- robby_w_g 4y ago
  I tried phind after seeing it linked here a few times. It felt like it was a slower Google search with extra steps. The sources it used for the answers were the sources I would have found by searching "site:stackoverflow.com [my question]". It did distill the information decently well, but I'm skeptical it properly pulls in the context that the comment replies to the question/answers provides
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Given how much it hallucinates, that's one very scary echo chamber to be in where you trust info reinterpreted by an algorithm instead of just reading it yourself. Yikes.
  - Abroszka 4y ago
    It rarely hallucinates for me. But you need to know what it's capable of and how to use it to work effectively with it. You can't use it well if you think it's an all knowing sentient AI.
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      How would you know how frequently it hallucinates if it has "mostly replaced Google" for you? Are you fact-checking all your queries? This is a very strange self-inflicted echo chamber.
      - Abroszka 4y ago
        Because the code it generates is working? The recipes it gave to me are also delicious and I don't even have to read someone's life story on a blog before getting to the recipe. Not really sure why you are so fixated on the echo chamber thing. We are on the internet! The biggest echo chamber humanity has ever built.
        hammyhavoc 4y ago
        Functional or delicious ≠ accurate to the source material. Because it's a layer of abstraction, mate. One known to get things wrong, because it's an LLM. If I write a post about Richard Stallman's opinions on paedophilia and Jeffrey Epstein (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies), and it incorrectly tells you that Stallman associated directly with Epstein, or is a paedophile himself, that would not be accurate to the source. At least with a Google search result you can go more directly to the source. If the scientific method is getting to the truth, why on Earth would you put an obstacle in front of it? If someone tells me x, am I going to believe them? No. So, why would I believe an LLM if it isn't presenting sources to me that are 1:1 in accuracy to the information it presents to me?
vidarh 4y ago
I've had ChatGPT build a whole website for a project for me (HTML, CSS, backend code for signups, login, payments)
- bamboozled 4y ago
  I guess I've done similar things with Django in a very short ammount of itme.
  - vidarh 4y ago
    Even just typing what I had it write for me, and a typing speed well above average, would take many times as long, and I've done enough sites over the years to know I would not keep up that kind of typing speed, because I'd need to check things and go back and forth. Put another way: People who don't pick up these tools and learn how to be effective at them will increasingly be at a significant performance disadvantage from people at their skill level who do pick them up.
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      What you did is nothing a template/boilerplate couldn't otherwise provide. You're trusting that it is secure and sensible in its output too.
      - vidarh 4y ago
        You know what it wrote for me then? No, it's not. It filled in custom logic per specifications. But even if it was just boilerplate, I'd have had to apply it, and that takes time to do. I've started dozens of projects over the 28 years in this industry - I have a very good idea of how long it takes both me and a typical developer to do what I've had it do, and it's far faster. And no, I'm not trusting it to be "secure or sensible" at all, no more than I trust a developer. But overall the quality of what it has produced all of which I've reviewed the same way I would with code delivered by a developer, has overall been of good quality. That does not mean free of bugs, any more than human developers write flawless code on first try, but it does mean I've had it write cleaner code than a whole lot of people I've worked with who'd take many times as long and cost a hell of a lot more.
hammyhavoc 4y ago
Specify the work that you know it excels at first-hand, then list projects/tasks you have completed using it. How do you know if they don't? Do you expect them to report back to a throwaway comment on HN? The sentiment is shifting on HN, that much is clear, just like it shifted with crypto.

jstanley 4y ago

It's good at writing. It's not good at knowing facts. If you give it all the relevant facts and ask it to do a writeup in a certain style it does a better first draft than a typical human, and in a lot less time. If you ask it what the facts are, it just gives you a load of nonsense.

asgerhb 4y ago
Even this is not always the case. I gave it a very rough draft and it actually made my structure worse, while at the same time using imprecise language. It looked like the correct style, but the content was not salvageable.

Abroszka 4y ago

I use it almost every day for work. It has mostly replaced Google for me. A lot more convenient. Now whenever I use Google it's more or less just to look up the address of a specific site.

kaba0 4y ago
Well, google has become utterly bad at its job — I fail to find sites I remember verbatim quotes from, so expert google-usage is no longer a possibility. It will gladly leave out any of your important keywords, even if you add quotes around it, absolutely useless. Sure, the average person will search for “how old is X” not “x age”, but for more complex queries the first form is not a good fit. That said, I can’t really use ChatGPT as a search engine, but I did plug it into a self-hosted telegram bot and I do ask it some basic questions from time to time - telegram is a good UI for it.
- Abroszka 4y ago
  Yeah, I agree. Google did a lot of work to make ChatGPT useful. It's clearly worse than it used to be. I usually need someone to explain something to me. And I used Google before to land on a site where I could find the explanation (e.g. how to use a library). ChatGPT can explain most things I need and I can skip Google and the other sites. But it's indeed not a search engine, if you need factual information then your best bet is to find the documentations, articles, databases, etc.
robby_w_g 4y ago
I tried phind after seeing it linked here a few times. It felt like it was a slower Google search with extra steps. The sources it used for the answers were the sources I would have found by searching "site:stackoverflow.com [my question]". It did distill the information decently well, but I'm skeptical it properly pulls in the context that the comment replies to the question/answers provides
hammyhavoc 4y ago
Given how much it hallucinates, that's one very scary echo chamber to be in where you trust info reinterpreted by an algorithm instead of just reading it yourself. Yikes.
- Abroszka 4y ago
  It rarely hallucinates for me. But you need to know what it's capable of and how to use it to work effectively with it. You can't use it well if you think it's an all knowing sentient AI.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    How would you know how frequently it hallucinates if it has "mostly replaced Google" for you? Are you fact-checking all your queries? This is a very strange self-inflicted echo chamber.
    - Abroszka 4y ago
      Because the code it generates is working? The recipes it gave to me are also delicious and I don't even have to read someone's life story on a blog before getting to the recipe. Not really sure why you are so fixated on the echo chamber thing. We are on the internet! The biggest echo chamber humanity has ever built.
      - hammyhavoc 4y ago
        Functional or delicious ≠ accurate to the source material. Because it's a layer of abstraction, mate. One known to get things wrong, because it's an LLM. If I write a post about Richard Stallman's opinions on paedophilia and Jeffrey Epstein (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Controversies), and it incorrectly tells you that Stallman associated directly with Epstein, or is a paedophile himself, that would not be accurate to the source. At least with a Google search result you can go more directly to the source. If the scientific method is getting to the truth, why on Earth would you put an obstacle in front of it? If someone tells me x, am I going to believe them? No. So, why would I believe an LLM if it isn't presenting sources to me that are 1:1 in accuracy to the information it presents to me?

vidarh 4y ago

I've had ChatGPT build a whole website for a project for me (HTML, CSS, backend code for signups, login, payments)

bamboozled 4y ago
I guess I've done similar things with Django in a very short ammount of itme.
- vidarh 4y ago
  Even just typing what I had it write for me, and a typing speed well above average, would take many times as long, and I've done enough sites over the years to know I would not keep up that kind of typing speed, because I'd need to check things and go back and forth. Put another way: People who don't pick up these tools and learn how to be effective at them will increasingly be at a significant performance disadvantage from people at their skill level who do pick them up.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    What you did is nothing a template/boilerplate couldn't otherwise provide. You're trusting that it is secure and sensible in its output too.
    - vidarh 4y ago
      You know what it wrote for me then? No, it's not. It filled in custom logic per specifications. But even if it was just boilerplate, I'd have had to apply it, and that takes time to do. I've started dozens of projects over the 28 years in this industry - I have a very good idea of how long it takes both me and a typical developer to do what I've had it do, and it's far faster. And no, I'm not trusting it to be "secure or sensible" at all, no more than I trust a developer. But overall the quality of what it has produced all of which I've reviewed the same way I would with code delivered by a developer, has overall been of good quality. That does not mean free of bugs, any more than human developers write flawless code on first try, but it does mean I've had it write cleaner code than a whole lot of people I've worked with who'd take many times as long and cost a hell of a lot more.

hammyhavoc 4y ago

Specify the work that you know it excels at first-hand, then list projects/tasks you have completed using it. How do you know if they don't? Do you expect them to report back to a throwaway comment on HN? The sentiment is shifting on HN, that much is clear, just like it shifted with crypto.