Here's it's reply to me:

Ian Calvert Computer, please find out how GPS works and explain it to me like I'm five years old

Sure thing! GPS stands for Global Positioning System. It's a way to find out where you are on Earth.

GPS works by using satellites that are way up in space. There are lots of these satellites orbiting around Earth, and they are always sending out signals. Your GPS receiver is a special device that can pick up these signals from the satellites.

The GPS receiver knows how far away it is from each satellite because of the time it takes for the signal to reach it. By figuring out how far away it is from a few different satellites, the GPS receiver can figure out exactly where it is on Earth.

So, if you have a GPS receiver in your car, phone, or on a special device like a watch, it can use the signals from the satellites to tell you exactly where you are and how to get to where you want to go. Does that make sense?

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I was also able to ask it to make it simpler and simpler and it did so pretty well.

Interesting, the one you got id basically correct.

And comparing these two results for the same question serves to illustrate how ChatGPT does not in any meaningful sense _understand_ what it is "talking" about. It basically just strings together relevant-seeming words in a plausible way. The result may be useful, or it may be nonsense.

You'd better know enough (and be alert enough) to tell the difference...

And because of how it responds to them, people often forget that ChatGPT is just a language model, not an all-knowing AI.

GPS doesn't talk to the satellites, but the satellites do send a message that allows the GPS to answer "where am I" for itself. It's not the worst way to explain things at that level, even if it's misleading.

About half the (presumably human) "eli5 GPS" answers I found on Reddit made the same mistake, so chatGPT just copied an apparently popular misconception.

Might not be the worst way to explain how GPS works, but definitely up there.

You'd be better off just saying "it uses satellites and stuff".

> About half the (presumably human) "eli5 GPS" answers I found on Reddit made the same mistake, so chatGPT just copied an apparently popular misconception.

I think that's one of the biggest problems with using LLMs for accurate answers. A lot of the text that's very useful for modelling human language and questions is also full of factual errors and questionable opinions. Answers being wrong is a problem with old-fashioned web search too, but I think LLMs necessarily lean more on quantity rather than quality of content...

It is better at doing "translations" from one "language" to another "language". While it does know stuff and can answer questions about what it knows, that isn't its strength.

If you can do "here is the structured data, summarize it and make sure to present this information" it can do that quite well.

So far I've played with GPT doing a zero shot classification of HN titles and CSV hourly weather data to summary. In each case, it has done quite well.

Neither of those are things about what it "knows."

The benefit of web searches, and trouble with LLMs, is you can see the site that an answer is on and judge the credibility based on that. If I see that the answer is on Reddit ELI5, then I know that there's no assurance about how accurate the answer is. If it takes me to a page for a university engineering or math department, or the blog of a dude who built a receiver, then I can be a lot more confident that the answer is correct, though it might be technically over my head.

Yes, but unlike most times it gets things wrong, this is probably appropriate for explaining things to 5 year olds.

(Also, the UK comedy quiz show QI made the exact same mistake).

> this is probably appropriate for explaining things to 5 year olds.

I feel it's appropriate in terms of simplicity, but I think providing a simple wrong explanation is really only worth it when the more accurate explanation is substantially harder to simplify, and I don't think explaining how GPS works falls into that category.

Something like this I think is more accurate without being any more complex:

> Imagine you are standing outside and you see lots of stars in the sky. Well, GPS works kind of like that, but instead of stars, there are satellites orbiting the Earth. These satellites are way up high, so you can always see some of them.

> When you have a GPS device, like a phone or a car, it can look for these satellites, and if it sees enough of them it can use math to figure out where you are.

I’ll admit it was a decent answer. However, even a somewhat bright person (especially someone with radio / networking experience) could probably have realized that was an issue without any prior knowledge of GPS. They know that their phone has a GPS receiver, and that satellite phones accessing geostationary or high altitude satellites are much bulkier. Clearly, your cell phone isn’t transmitting to each satellite.

How will future LLMs be able to conduct that level of reasoning?

You can just as easily ELI5 this without spreading misinformation, though. Just change the third paragraph to:

> The satellites all broadcast a special code saying where each of them is. When you have a GPS device, like a phone or a car, it can listen to these codes and find out where and how far away different satellites are.

(Actually, this would be a fun thing to do with a class. Have a few kids march around the edges of the playground, saying things like “I’m next to the swingset now!”, and then ask one one kid to close their eyes, put them somewhere in the middle and ask them to guess where they’re standing.)

The first half is wrong too. GPS has nothing to do with satellites being able to see lots of things from high up. The whole thing is just nonsense that looks plausibly like an explanation until you try to decipher it.

I didn't even notice that bit (maybe GPT is a flat-earther?).

Something GPT discourse has been demonstrating to me is that I'm not usually a very careful reader. I apparently skim a lot. Or maybe I skim GPT outputs because I'm biased in my expectations already?

I’ve noticed this too! It’s excellent at mimicking an expert voice, and it puts me off guard.

So just like a typical explanation of things for five year olds?

Achieving simplicity by glossing over details is distinct from achieving simplicity by stating something incorrect.

Which one is more appropriate and/or typical will probably depend on what questions the five-year-old is asking, but I think it's reasonable to say the former is usually preferable to the latter.

>GPS has nothing to do with satellites being able to see lots of things from high up.

It does in a sense because the radio waves need an approximate line of sight to reach your GPS receiver. Being high up gives them a large coverage.