5 ms·

Anytime I ask these things something (bard, gpt etc), 33% of the answer is genius, 33% misleading garbage, 33% filler stuff that’s neither here or there The

Anytime I ask these things something (bard, gpt etc), 33% of the answer is genius, 33% misleading garbage, 33% filler stuff that’s neither here or there The problem is distinguishing between these parts requires me to be be an expert in the area I’m inquiring about - and then why the heck do I need to ask some idiot bot for answers to questions that I already know an answer to? I don’t know who finds these things useful and more importantly blowing smoke up everyone’s collective rear, especially medias.

RC_ITR 3y ago
Remember when the Internet was new and no-one believed anything on it? Then, learning what to believe became a marketable skill for many people? Then society fundamentally changed because not everyone learned that skill? This is just that again. Gen Z will joke about their millennial/Gen X bosses believing anything the AI tells them and it will probably lead to some sort of mainstream conspiracy that Jackie O herself is running it or something (to those reading: please don't take this idea)
- grugagag 3y ago
  > Remember when the Internet was new and no-one believed anything on it? Is this true?
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Yes. "Anyone can write anything on there! There's no way to trust it." About halfway through high school they started letting us cite websites, and it was a big deal and considered very forward thinking.
  - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
    I remember my parents and teachers indicating this, and me and my friends thinking “then why do they trust TV, books, etc.?”
  - wewtyflakes 3y ago
    This is true; it was a almost a meme before memes existed, as to say "I saw it on the internet so it must be true!", as a way to teasingly highlight how non-credible it was seen at the time.
    - klyrs 3y ago
      "Kilroy was here" was a meme before "meme" was coined. I don't think the phrase "before memes existed" has meaning.
      - wewtyflakes 3y ago
        Sure. Maybe better if I qualified it with "as they exist as we know them today"
  - repler 3y ago
    yes. I remember boomers shitting on Wikipedia around 2004, but fast forward to present day and the same people would cite it.
  - wombatpm 3y ago
    On the internet no one knew you were a dog according to the Net Yorker cartoon
stocknoob 3y ago
Yeah, I don’t think a machine that generates novel genius ideas 1 out of 3 times is useful either. Creating a new idea is exactly as hard as curating them.
- cageface 3y ago
  What novel genius ideas has the machine created so far?
  - stocknoob 3y ago
    From today, it lets a hobbyist create better home automation than trillion dollar FAANG companies can provide: https://www.atomic14.com/2023/05/14/is-this-the-future-of-home-automation.html https://www.atomic14.com/2023/05/14/is-this-the-future-of-ho... The novelty is asking the machine to use its own genius to do the right thing.
- iseanstevens 3y ago
  Sarcasm?
yberreby 3y ago
> The problem is distinguishing between these parts requires me to be be an expert in the area I’m inquiring about - and then why the heck do I need to ask some idiot bot for answers to questions that I already know an answer to? Because it can be significantly faster to check something for correctness than to produce it? More so when the correctness check can itself be automated to some extent.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > ecause it can be significantly faster to check something for correctness than to produce it Erm no There are many things that cant be easily checked especially if you dont know the topic well
  - omeze 3y ago
    Youre right but I think the point still stands. Many times it really is easier to verify than produce. Compilable code being a good example.
    - Firmwarrior 3y ago
      I dunno about you, but I spend a LOT of my time fixing code that was broken in some subtle way the compiler didn't catch If we're talking about generating and integrating sample code, it's great at that Anything more advanced and it's a footgun
      - tominous 3y ago
        I have very quickly picked up the habit of pasting snippets of my code into GPT-4 and simply asking "Why is this not working?" Almost every time, it succinctly explains the apparent purpose of the code, and how it is subtly wrong. It's so good that I often do this preemptively to avoid a compile/deploy/test cycle.
  - yberreby 3y ago
    Indeed, but I'm not claiming it's always faster to check than to produce. Simply that when it is the case, using GPT-4 can be worth it. It is to me - I use it daily.
valine 3y ago
Multiple choice tests are easier than fill in the blank precisely because it's easier to recognize when something is correct than it is to regurgitate a fact from thin air. You don't have to be an expert to recognize when ChatGPT is providing useful information. There's a middle ground between expert and novice where ChatGPT provides real value. Its the times where you would know the answer if you saw it, but can quite remember it off the top of your head.
agotterer 3y ago
I personally find value because it saves me time. I’ll ask chat-gpt to write something slightly more complex than boilerplate code for me based on some requirements. Because I’m an “expert” I can read/run the code and message back improvements and tweaks until to arrives at something satisfactory. It certainly doesn’t always produce correct code from the start and I often encounter syntax errors or code which doesn’t work. However, I’ve found it pretty good at remedying those issues when I describe what’s wrong. It produces something which is a good enough starting place. Sure, I could have written the code myself because I already know how. But I’ve found it saves me time and require minimal effort.
steveBK123 3y ago
Yeah I think the use cares for these things are far narrower than the boosters & hype cycle think. If you could have unlimited interns for $0 (let's pretend it doesn't cost tons and tons of compute) that don't shutup, hallucinate & lie, and also do good work, in varying degrees.. how many would you want? These things are probably going to be great for lots of blackout - propaganda, political marketing, flooding the zone with BS of unlimited iterations of messaging. Basically things that can be A/B tested to death, where veracity is of zero importance, and you have near limitless shots on goal to keep iterating.
jiggawatts 3y ago
Bard is a brain-damaged-but-literate idiot compared to GPT 3, which is still dumber than the typical human. Try GPT 4 for a week. I've found it to be more like 50% immediately useful, 25% very impressive, and 25% where it's not wrong but I have to poke it a few times with different prompts to coax out the specific answer I'm looking for. That's better than most humans that I collaborate with at work. Literally half of humans -- in a professional IT setting -- can't understand simplified, clear english in emails. Similarly, in my experience about half can't follow simple A -> B logic. Many are perpetually perplexed that prerequisites need to precede the work, not be a footnote in the post-mortem of the predictable failure. Etc... PS: That last sentence is too hard for several English-native speakers I work with to parse. Seriously. I'm not even exaggerating the tiniest bit. I've had coworkers fail to understand words like "orthogonal" or "vanilla" in a sentence. Vanilla! In my estimation, Chat GPT 4 is already smarter than many people, certainly the bottom 25% of the human population. LLMs are a real existential threat to those people in their current state. A few more years of improvement, and they'll be displacing the bottom 50% in workplaces, easily.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > I’ve had coworkers fail to understand words like “orthogonal” or “vanilla” in a sentence. Vanilla! Presumably, you are referring to the idiomatic use of vanilla, which is probably a less-universal idiom than you think it is (it is of fairly recent origin in wide use, derives from a specific American cultural loading of the literal vanilla flavor) and which, even when the general idiom is understood, can rely on a deeply shared understanding of what is the basic default in the referenced context to actually be understand as to its contextual meaning.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  Not to be rude, but are you paid by OpenAI to say this? The amount of comments here telling people to “upgrade to ChatGPT 4” is absolutely unprecedented. I know it might be good, but people will find value in it and upgrade if they see the need to do so?
  - jiggawatts 3y ago

RC_ITR 3y ago

Remember when the Internet was new and no-one believed anything on it? Then, learning what to believe became a marketable skill for many people? Then society fundamentally changed because not everyone learned that skill? This is just that again. Gen Z will joke about their millennial/Gen X bosses believing anything the AI tells them and it will probably lead to some sort of mainstream conspiracy that Jackie O herself is running it or something (to those reading: please don't take this idea)

grugagag 3y ago
> Remember when the Internet was new and no-one believed anything on it? Is this true?
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Yes. "Anyone can write anything on there! There's no way to trust it." About halfway through high school they started letting us cite websites, and it was a big deal and considered very forward thinking.
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  I remember my parents and teachers indicating this, and me and my friends thinking “then why do they trust TV, books, etc.?”
- wewtyflakes 3y ago
  This is true; it was a almost a meme before memes existed, as to say "I saw it on the internet so it must be true!", as a way to teasingly highlight how non-credible it was seen at the time.
  - klyrs 3y ago
    "Kilroy was here" was a meme before "meme" was coined. I don't think the phrase "before memes existed" has meaning.
    - wewtyflakes 3y ago
      Sure. Maybe better if I qualified it with "as they exist as we know them today"
- repler 3y ago
  yes. I remember boomers shitting on Wikipedia around 2004, but fast forward to present day and the same people would cite it.
- wombatpm 3y ago
  On the internet no one knew you were a dog according to the Net Yorker cartoon

stocknoob 3y ago

Yeah, I don’t think a machine that generates novel genius ideas 1 out of 3 times is useful either. Creating a new idea is exactly as hard as curating them.

cageface 3y ago
What novel genius ideas has the machine created so far?
- stocknoob 3y ago
  From today, it lets a hobbyist create better home automation than trillion dollar FAANG companies can provide: https://www.atomic14.com/2023/05/14/is-this-the-future-of-home-automation.html https://www.atomic14.com/2023/05/14/is-this-the-future-of-ho... The novelty is asking the machine to use its own genius to do the right thing.
iseanstevens 3y ago
Sarcasm?

yberreby 3y ago

> The problem is distinguishing between these parts requires me to be be an expert in the area I’m inquiring about - and then why the heck do I need to ask some idiot bot for answers to questions that I already know an answer to? Because it can be significantly faster to check something for correctness than to produce it? More so when the correctness check can itself be automated to some extent.

ekianjo 3y ago
> ecause it can be significantly faster to check something for correctness than to produce it Erm no There are many things that cant be easily checked especially if you dont know the topic well
- omeze 3y ago
  Youre right but I think the point still stands. Many times it really is easier to verify than produce. Compilable code being a good example.
  - Firmwarrior 3y ago
    I dunno about you, but I spend a LOT of my time fixing code that was broken in some subtle way the compiler didn't catch If we're talking about generating and integrating sample code, it's great at that Anything more advanced and it's a footgun
    - tominous 3y ago
      I have very quickly picked up the habit of pasting snippets of my code into GPT-4 and simply asking "Why is this not working?" Almost every time, it succinctly explains the apparent purpose of the code, and how it is subtly wrong. It's so good that I often do this preemptively to avoid a compile/deploy/test cycle.
- yberreby 3y ago
  Indeed, but I'm not claiming it's always faster to check than to produce. Simply that when it is the case, using GPT-4 can be worth it. It is to me - I use it daily.

valine 3y ago

Multiple choice tests are easier than fill in the blank precisely because it's easier to recognize when something is correct than it is to regurgitate a fact from thin air. You don't have to be an expert to recognize when ChatGPT is providing useful information. There's a middle ground between expert and novice where ChatGPT provides real value. Its the times where you would know the answer if you saw it, but can quite remember it off the top of your head.

agotterer 3y ago

I personally find value because it saves me time. I’ll ask chat-gpt to write something slightly more complex than boilerplate code for me based on some requirements. Because I’m an “expert” I can read/run the code and message back improvements and tweaks until to arrives at something satisfactory. It certainly doesn’t always produce correct code from the start and I often encounter syntax errors or code which doesn’t work. However, I’ve found it pretty good at remedying those issues when I describe what’s wrong. It produces something which is a good enough starting place. Sure, I could have written the code myself because I already know how. But I’ve found it saves me time and require minimal effort.

steveBK123 3y ago

Yeah I think the use cares for these things are far narrower than the boosters & hype cycle think. If you could have unlimited interns for $0 (let's pretend it doesn't cost tons and tons of compute) that don't shutup, hallucinate & lie, and also do good work, in varying degrees.. how many would you want? These things are probably going to be great for lots of blackout - propaganda, political marketing, flooding the zone with BS of unlimited iterations of messaging. Basically things that can be A/B tested to death, where veracity is of zero importance, and you have near limitless shots on goal to keep iterating.

jiggawatts 3y ago

Bard is a brain-damaged-but-literate idiot compared to GPT 3, which is still dumber than the typical human. Try GPT 4 for a week. I've found it to be more like 50% immediately useful, 25% very impressive, and 25% where it's not wrong but I have to poke it a few times with different prompts to coax out the specific answer I'm looking for. That's better than most humans that I collaborate with at work. Literally half of humans -- in a professional IT setting -- can't understand simplified, clear english in emails. Similarly, in my experience about half can't follow simple A -> B logic. Many are perpetually perplexed that prerequisites need to precede the work, not be a footnote in the post-mortem of the predictable failure. Etc... PS: That last sentence is too hard for several English-native speakers I work with to parse. Seriously. I'm not even exaggerating the tiniest bit. I've had coworkers fail to understand words like "orthogonal" or "vanilla" in a sentence. Vanilla! In my estimation, Chat GPT 4 is already smarter than many people, certainly the bottom 25% of the human population. LLMs are a real existential threat to those people in their current state. A few more years of improvement, and they'll be displacing the bottom 50% in workplaces, easily.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> I’ve had coworkers fail to understand words like “orthogonal” or “vanilla” in a sentence. Vanilla! Presumably, you are referring to the idiomatic use of vanilla, which is probably a less-universal idiom than you think it is (it is of fairly recent origin in wide use, derives from a specific American cultural loading of the literal vanilla flavor) and which, even when the general idiom is understood, can rely on a deeply shared understanding of what is the basic default in the referenced context to actually be understand as to its contextual meaning.
ChatGTP 3y ago
Not to be rude, but are you paid by OpenAI to say this? The amount of comments here telling people to “upgrade to ChatGPT 4” is absolutely unprecedented. I know it might be good, but people will find value in it and upgrade if they see the need to do so?
- jiggawatts 3y ago