We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics

Re:We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not deba... by georgyo on Friday April 07, 2023 @08:10PM (#35488883)

I thought yams and sweet potatoes were the same thing for many years. I have told people that they were the same thing, because that is what I believed.

My thoughts were reinforced that in common American English we refer to both with the same name frequently.

However they are different, and I eventually was corrected and I was able to verify that correction.

The question is, when I legitimately believe my knowledge was correct, was I lying?

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Re:We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not deba... by kerkeslager on Friday April 07, 2023 @08:25PM (#35489006)

I would say no. If you believe what you said, you're not lying.

There are grey areas here, like levels of confidence in our knowledge. A rational person believes very few things with 100% certainty, but it's not reasonable to be paralyzed by even the slightest amount of doubt and never say anything. I think a reasonable approach is to state things with some indication of your level of confidence, like:

1. Obviously sweet potatoes are yams. 2. Sweet potatoes are yams. 3. I am pretty sure sweet potatoes are yams. 4. I think sweet potatoes are yams. 5. I think sweet potatoes are yams, but I'm not sure. 6. I think sweet potatoes are yams, but I don't really know why I think that. 7. Sweet potatoes might be yams.

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