If it only hallucinated facts in 5% of cases, it'd be more trustworthy than most people I know.

You don't consult most people you know on things you'd consult with an specialist, but asking ChatGPT is portrayed as something closer to consulting with an specialist than to consulting someone on the street.

Yep. Ask it a popular question, and it might get it right. Ask an equivalent question that is unknown and it gets it hilariously wrong.

  > What is the volume of the Statue of Liberty?

  The Statue of Liberty is a hollow copper statue, and its volume can be calculated by multiplying its height, width, and depth. The statue's height is 151 feet (46 meters) from the base to the torch, and its width is 35 feet (10.7 meters) at the waist. The depth of the statue, or the thickness of the copper shell, is about 2.25 inches (5.7 centimeters) throughout most of the statue.

  Using these measurements, the volume of the Statue of Liberty can be calculated as follows:

  Volume = Height x Width x Depth
  Volume = 151 ft x 35 ft x 0.1875 ft (2.25 inches converted to feet)
  Volume = 985.3125 cubic feet

  Therefore, the volume of the Statue of Liberty is approximately 985.3125 cubic feet (or 27.86 cubic meters).

It sounds confident, the maths looks correct, but the answer is entirely wrong in multiple ways. It might be interesting to see what prompt you would need to use for it to calculate say the cylindrical volume of the main body?

> 151 x 35 x 0.1875 = 985.3125

It's actually 990.9375. Curious how it botched the multiplication but still got an almost-right answer (to that multiplication, not to the actual question.)

Agreed.

I will point out that it's frequently useful with knowledge-based questions where it's hard to generate a correct answer, but easy to verify whether an answer is correct.