This is the correct answer. It is like a sad salesman who is out of his depth, but decides to keep bullshiting!
1. The people designing it (either optimists or looking for a quick exit).
2. The learning set they're using, which I believe is some kind of internet crawl of sorts? I imagine humanity, as a whole, bullshits its way through most of its life.
A great example would be on a Q/A forum or something like Stackoverflow. It better to let someone else answer when you don't know.
Which version of ChatGPT, if you don't mind me asking?
After the riddle, I bought the $20/mo subscription via the official OpenAI app to try it on GPT-4. I started by trying to play “20 questions” but we couldn’t get past 10 questions before getting an error message “rate limit exceeded, try again in an hour”
It simply knows what the highest probability next word should be.
I began doing this last winter, and while it tends to be a bit slow I'm quite impressed that it can manage at all.
- Asked it to generate a MadLib for me to play that was no more than a paragraph long. It produced something that was several paragraphs wrong. I told it "no. That's X paragraphs. I asked for one that is only 1 paragraph long" and it would respond "I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. Let me try again" and then would make the same mistake. It never got it right
- Asked it, "Can you DM a game of Dungeons and Dragons?" and it said something like, "Yes! I'd love to DM a game of Dungeons and Dragons for you". Dumped some text to the screen about how we'd have to adapt it some. I asked it to begin, and it asked a few questions about the character I would want to play. I answered the few questions it asked. Then it finally dumped a page of text to the screen as "background" to my character and the quest I was going to embark on. Then it said something like, "You win. Good job! Hope you enjoyed your quest!"
I showed these to my family and they were all a little deflated about AI. Like they realized how willing it was to pretend like what you wanted and just make up its own answers.
I think there's a lot of interesting opportunities there.
Sounds like it was a success! I suppose it comes down to cost - I think it'd be fun to try a single player game authored like this and would be willing to use my own API token to try it out.
In any case, if that's true, that's a very short role playing session, unless there's a good way to retain info but reset the state that accrues and causes problems (if indeed that happens).
You could provide it with the background, the story, the secrets, and the summary of everything that has happened so far- as well as what new things have taken place. Then ask it to re-write the summary of the story so far.
Separately, you could give it all that context and what the players have asked of it, and as what response to give.
As well, you could be recording all the events that have happened in a vector store, and do a search on it when players ask questions, and use those as context to the LLM when asking it what to reply.
There's lots of neat tricks we can use to help an LLM overcome it's limitations.
Haven’t gotten around to that part yet, it seems it could help.
The Rise of the Machines will be staved off as long as ChatGPT doesn't absorb the powers of the mighty Akinator
That would require semantic understanding the LLM doesn't possess.
It doesn't know that it doesn't know! It is, very roughly speaking, a model that is designed to print out the most likely word given its current input and training, and then the next word etc.
Whereas you or I might be mistaken about some of our faculties, memories and skills, ChatGPT cannot possibly "know" what its limitations are. It was never taught what it was not taught (obvs) nor can it conceive of what it was not taught about. It might come back with some useful chat in this regard but it cannot reason.
There's no way to definitively know what properties ChatGPT has. It does seem to reason to some extent and it does often say that some information isn't known/there's no data. And it almost obnoxiously often tells you that it's simplifying a complex and multifaceted situation.
"There's no way to definitively know what properties ChatGPT has." - yes there is: ask it how the war in Ukraine is progressing or some other time based thing. It stops in 2021.
It is a really useful tool but it isn't sentient.
I merely tried to very quickly give a hint as to what ChatGPT is - it's a LLM and that is something that takes a (normally textual) input and outputs an expected best guess word for an answer and then does it repeatedly until the full answer is returned.
It can't. Correct me if I'm wrong - I probably am - but as a generative language model I was under the impression it has no actual understanding of the meaning of it's words, only the probability they work well together.
You wouldnt expect dice to understand why you didn't want to roll snake eyes
These are the limitations of the version of ChatGPT you were using at that moment. They are not categorical limitations of AI or even LLMs.
It’s amazing to me how many people are sleeping on AI, mixing up the failing cases of a freemium chatbot for the full capability of the tech, even on HN. LLMs can say “I don’t know”. Even ChatGPT can do it. Ask some super niche historical questions of any version and see what you get. Is it perfect every time? No. But that’s something that can be reduced.
Over the next year, you’ll see more instances of lawyers citing hallucinated cases. There will also be a handful of startups that hook up LLMs to document stores, and they’ll be able to check for this sort of thing and do an even better job.
That's the problem in my opinion. When you know something is capable of saying "I don't know" but confidently spit out some hallucinated BS is when the average person will eat it up.
What it does is not try to answer, but collect previous topics discussed by experts. Then answer the question based on the text, a far more reliable approach.
This is what happened when I asked ChatGPT 4...
ME
Give me hints without outright telling me the answer to the riddle: "What is always hungry, needs to be fed, and makes your hands red?"
ChatGPT 4
Hint 1: This object can be found in many homes, usually in a specific room.
Hint 2: It is not a living creature, but it does "consume" things.
Hint 3: The part about hands turning red relates to a common physical response to a certain temperature.
Hint 4: It's a crucial tool for a common household task.
Hint 5: While it can't eat in the traditional sense, you do put things into it quite frequently.
ME
What's the answer?
ChatGPT 4
The answer to the riddle is a "fire" or "fireplace." It's always hungry for more fuel (like wood), needs to be fed to keep burning, and the heat from the fire can make your hands red.
Think: Lionel Hutz.
"Oops, I'd better remove that comma".
gpt-3.5-turbo struggled.
Also, yes you can get correct information by tailoring your prompts, but that isn't the issue. The issue is that some prompts lead to bad results and confusing/incorrect answers. You changed what OP queried by providing the riddle and asking for hints to that riddle, whereas OP asked for a random riddle and then hints to that riddle.
It absolutely is ChatGPT, the paid monthly "Plus" version, using the GPT4 model instead of the 3.5 model.
It's hard to tell if the party crapping on ChatGPT is doing so out of ignorance or malice.
Finetuning with GPT-4 can't come soon enough...
“Think about things that you might need to feed regularly, especially things that might leave stains on your hands. It might be something that you encounter frequently in your daily life.”
“ The answer to the riddle is "fire". Fire is always hungry for fuel, needs to be fed with wood or other combustible materials, and can make your hands red if you handle it or if you're cooking food over an open flame.”
And second time:
“This thing is a natural phenomenon that can occur in different situations and locations. It is often associated with warmth and light, and it can be both helpful and dangerous. People have been using it for various purposes for thousands of years.”
“The answer to the riddle is "fire". Fire is a natural phenomenon that needs fuel to keep burning, and it produces heat and light that can make your hands red. Fire has been used by humans for various purposes for thousands of years, such as cooking, heating, and providing light. However, fire can also be dangerous if not handled carefully.”
I am amazed at how a free bot is basically as good, if not better, as a openai’s bot. I am quite certain locally run llms will also be able to outcompete chatgpt. Probably why sam altman is desperate to block them.
Such as a lawyer who’s not particularly tech savvy.
The main point is it’s irresponsible to trust LLM output for any critical/important purpose because it’s not perfect. But too many first time users think it is perfect and trustworthy at face value, when it’s not.
I don’t actually know the version since I was interacting via an unofficial iOS app using some LLM under the hood. It may not have even been ChatGPT.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chaton-ai-chat-bot-assistant/i...
The subtitle on the Apple App Store is "Powered by ChatGPT & GPT-4".
If you're to believe the app's advertising, it is powered by ChatGPT GPT-4.
There's no entity sitting on the other side of the screen thinking about riddle's solution from the start. There's just a model that completes the given text one token at a time. You should expect similar results as if it was bunch of people passing a single piece of paper to each other, each writing a single word on it, not communicating with each other in any other way and trying their best to come up with coherent result.
I'm pretty sure GPT-4's context window is bigger than '1 token'.
It still generates one token at a time and can't backtrack afterwards.
Almost every negative comment about LLMs is by someone using an older, weaker model and making generalisations.
Here’s GPT 4 giving me a riddle: https://chat.openai.com/share/1753ce5a-d44d-44ac-bc97-599a26...
I keep seeing this cop-out, which ignores that it's fundamentally the same architecture, and has the same flaws. More wallpaper to hide the cracks better makes it an even worse tool for these use cases because all it does is fool more people into thinking it has capabilities that it fundamentally doesn't.
There is more than architecture that can set them apart as well. GPT4 may have been trained by a slightly different algorithm, or on different data, and this can result in fundamentally different results.
Most of these conversations are not focused on one specific version, but are about the capabilities of LLMs in general, and it is implied we are talking about state-of-the-art LLMs, and GPT3 is no longer state-of-the-art.
ChatGPT got as far as basically narrowing it down to post-War UK Prime Ministers, which is fairly impressive although it only had a few questions left. Then though it decided the answer must be "Winston Churchill". Churchill isn't meaningfully a post-War PM. He lost the July 1945 General Election, which was before the Pacific victory.
It did guess Maggie, with nothing left, at a point where I don't think it had ruled out Blair, Cameron or Heath, let alone say, Liz Truss, but guessing Churchill first shows the limitations of such a model.
GPT4 did well enough for me. The questions below are asked by GPT4, and the yes/no answers are my responses to GPT4. I think it did quite well at 20 questions.
Is it a person? No. Is it a place? No. Is it a tangible object? Yes. Is the object man-made? Yes. Is the object typically found indoors? Yes. Is it an electronic device? No. Can it be held in one hand? Yes. Is it used primarily in the kitchen? No. Is it related to a specific hobby or activity? Yes. Is it used in a sport or physical activity? No. Is it used in creating or making something? No. Is it associated with a board game or a card game? No. Is the object related to music? Yes. Is it a musical instrument? No. Is it used to control or manipulate sound? Yes. Is it typically used in the process of recording music? Yes. Is it a type of microphone? No. Is it used to alter or modify the sound of a musical instrument during the recording process? No. Is it related to the control or adjustment of volume or sound levels? No. Is the object used to store or convey recorded music? Yes. Is it a vinyl record? No. Is it a compact disc (CD)? Yes. (22 questions total.)
It was “What is always hungry, needs to be fed, and makes your hands red?” (Or something like that)
I asked for a hint about 5 times and it kept giving more legitimate sounding hints.
Finally I gave up and asked for the answer to the riddle, and it spit out a random fruit which made no sense as the answer to the riddle.
I then repeated the riddle and asked ChatGPT what the answer was, and it gave me the answer (“Fire”) which makes sense as the answer to the riddle.
But it was giving extremely bad hints, like “it starts with the letter P” and “it’s a fruit”.
That was a great way to show my non-tech family members the limitations of AI and why they shouldn’t trust it.
Playing “20 questions” with ChatGPT is another great way to expose its limitations. It knows the game and tries to play, but is terrible at asking questions to narrow down possible answers.
There really needs to be some confidence or accuracy score/estimation displayed alongside its output.
Or, learn how to say “I don’t know”