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I watched an interview the other evening: Woodward & Bernstein, interviewed by Amol Rajan of the BBC (he's a horrible interviewer). As his last question, he re

I watched an interview the other evening: Woodward & Bernstein, interviewed by Amol Rajan of the BBC (he's a horrible interviewer). As his last question, he read out a piece of prose about W&B; it was bland, uncritical, even sycophantic. It was also factually accurate. Then he told them it was ChatGPT output, for a prompt along the lines of "Write a report about W&B, focusing on Watergate and the influence they've had on other journalists". (The actual question's irrelevant, and the answers were garbled, partly because Rajan made such a mess of the interview.) I have no idea how you'd make an effective spam filter to catch GPT output. It seems like an impossible task.

refulgentis 3y ago
Gathering details to make sure I understand correctly: - Amol from BBC interviewed Bob Woodward[^1^]. - As the last question, Amol asked a "bland, uncritical, even sycophantic" question that was from ChatGPT. My confusion peaks around here: > (The actual question's irrelevant, and the answers were garbled, partly because Rajan made such a mess of the interview.) From that, I gather: - there was one ChatGPT question, multiple people tried answering it. - the answers to this question weren't great. - however, the poor answer quality is not solely attributable to the answerers, as in your opinion (stated early and often!) the interviewer is bad. Given those bits, it does sound to me like a detector is possible, if only because you detected it, and the author seems to be able to detect it, and I think, oddly, I can detect it. There's something "off" about the text, at least from 3.5, that gives me short-term hope. [^1^] not Bernstein, presumably, since Bernstein was dead in 1990 therefore he could not be asked to answer a question from ChatGPT
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > - Amol from BBC interviewed Bob Woodward[^1^]. And Bernstein; rumours of his death are much exaggerated. The pair were in London for the Ivor Novello awards. There was a "report" by ChatGPT, followed by a vague question about the impact of AI text-generators on reporting. ChatGPT didn't ask questions. The interviewer was evidently in awe of these two men; his sycophantic remarks punctuated the interview, and left the interviewees with not much to say. They also took away momentum from the interview. I didn't detect it; I would have guessed that it was from a Wikipedia article. WP articles about living people are generally non-critical and uncontroversial. The interviewer said (after reading it out) that it was ChatGPT. The author detected it presumably because he prompted ChatGPT to produce the report himself. I'm sorry that my comment confused you so much! But if you were convinced that Bernstein was dead, I'm not surprised that you were confused.
  - refulgentis 3y ago
    Omg!!! I even “double checked”, like I could have sworn I saw a death date on his Wikipedia. Thanks, yeah, that solved everything lol. Cheers

refulgentis 3y ago

Gathering details to make sure I understand correctly: - Amol from BBC interviewed Bob Woodward[^1^]. - As the last question, Amol asked a "bland, uncritical, even sycophantic" question that was from ChatGPT. My confusion peaks around here: > (The actual question's irrelevant, and the answers were garbled, partly because Rajan made such a mess of the interview.) From that, I gather: - there was one ChatGPT question, multiple people tried answering it. - the answers to this question weren't great. - however, the poor answer quality is not solely attributable to the answerers, as in your opinion (stated early and often!) the interviewer is bad. Given those bits, it does sound to me like a detector is possible, if only because you detected it, and the author seems to be able to detect it, and I think, oddly, I can detect it. There's something "off" about the text, at least from 3.5, that gives me short-term hope. [^1^] not Bernstein, presumably, since Bernstein was dead in 1990 therefore he could not be asked to answer a question from ChatGPT

denton-scratch 3y ago
> - Amol from BBC interviewed Bob Woodward[^1^]. And Bernstein; rumours of his death are much exaggerated. The pair were in London for the Ivor Novello awards. There was a "report" by ChatGPT, followed by a vague question about the impact of AI text-generators on reporting. ChatGPT didn't ask questions. The interviewer was evidently in awe of these two men; his sycophantic remarks punctuated the interview, and left the interviewees with not much to say. They also took away momentum from the interview. I didn't detect it; I would have guessed that it was from a Wikipedia article. WP articles about living people are generally non-critical and uncontroversial. The interviewer said (after reading it out) that it was ChatGPT. The author detected it presumably because he prompted ChatGPT to produce the report himself. I'm sorry that my comment confused you so much! But if you were convinced that Bernstein was dead, I'm not surprised that you were confused.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  Omg!!! I even “double checked”, like I could have sworn I saw a death date on his Wikipedia. Thanks, yeah, that solved everything lol. Cheers