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The problem is, how do you trust what GPT gives you any more than the top 5 google results you'll get? What makes its answers trustworthy?

staunton 3y ago
You don't trust it more than the top 5 google results. Surely, you wouldn't argue that search engines are useless because not everything that's written on the internet is trustworthy. For programming, you can just test if it works. That's how most people[1] check if their own code is trustworthy, absent considerations of security against malicious attackers. In general, knowledge and authority or trustworthiness are different things. I said this makes knowledge worthless. It does not make authority or proof of authenticity worthless; probably, the opposite. [1]: those who aren't able to always write 100% perfect code on the first try
- agentgumshoe 3y ago
  I think the issue is the authority is worthless. At least with Google you can see the source of those 5 responses and check their quality (i.e. SEO content), ChatGPT is just 'trust me bro.'
  - staunton 3y ago
    With some LLMs, there are efforts to make them cite sources (of course this is hard). On the other hand, existing LLMs are becoming more truthful over time (GPT4 is more truthful than GPT3, etc.). The possible applications of the technology have known required levels of trustworthiness. As the tools surpass any given threshold, new use-cases become attractive. Already at current levels of performance there are many applications where it's easier to test or continue researching a hypothesis than to find plausible and relevant ones. No source of information is perfectly trustworthy and we have to deal with that. This is sometimes called "critical thinking" and might become a more important skill. There is also a good chance that AI systems can be trained to do this themselves and "fact-check" the responses of others while providing sources and reasoning, which would be one tool to increase the level of trustworthiness.
    - agentgumshoe 3y ago
      Or we could use our own brains, I imagine critical thinking is an important skill we shouldn't really outsource. But hey, we march to the beat of technology. If you come to 'trust' AI for critical thinking, how do you then know when or if it has been manipulated (surely it is naive to think the governments and power centres won't do everything they can to make AI say the 'right' things)?

staunton 3y ago

You don't trust it more than the top 5 google results. Surely, you wouldn't argue that search engines are useless because not everything that's written on the internet is trustworthy. For programming, you can just test if it works. That's how most people[1] check if their own code is trustworthy, absent considerations of security against malicious attackers. In general, knowledge and authority or trustworthiness are different things. I said this makes knowledge worthless. It does not make authority or proof of authenticity worthless; probably, the opposite. [1]: those who aren't able to always write 100% perfect code on the first try

agentgumshoe 3y ago
I think the issue is the authority is worthless. At least with Google you can see the source of those 5 responses and check their quality (i.e. SEO content), ChatGPT is just 'trust me bro.'
- staunton 3y ago
  With some LLMs, there are efforts to make them cite sources (of course this is hard). On the other hand, existing LLMs are becoming more truthful over time (GPT4 is more truthful than GPT3, etc.). The possible applications of the technology have known required levels of trustworthiness. As the tools surpass any given threshold, new use-cases become attractive. Already at current levels of performance there are many applications where it's easier to test or continue researching a hypothesis than to find plausible and relevant ones. No source of information is perfectly trustworthy and we have to deal with that. This is sometimes called "critical thinking" and might become a more important skill. There is also a good chance that AI systems can be trained to do this themselves and "fact-check" the responses of others while providing sources and reasoning, which would be one tool to increase the level of trustworthiness.
  - agentgumshoe 3y ago
    Or we could use our own brains, I imagine critical thinking is an important skill we shouldn't really outsource. But hey, we march to the beat of technology. If you come to 'trust' AI for critical thinking, how do you then know when or if it has been manipulated (surely it is naive to think the governments and power centres won't do everything they can to make AI say the 'right' things)?