Re:OpenAI postmortem – Unexpected responses from ChatGPT
by crote on Thursday February 22, 2024 @11:38AM
(#39469564)
I believe that for a large number of applications the distinction between "knowing something" and "containing knowledge" doesn't really matter.
In 2010s Google I could type in a query, and it would redirect me to a human-written answer on something like StackOverflow with hopefully the right answer; in 2024 ChatGPT you can type in a query and it'll mash together some relevant human-written snippets into something which is hopefully coherent, relevant, and correct. Sure, it's "just" a Markov chain generator on steroids, but it's still giving you useful output.
I do agree that it is a bit worrying to what extent people are anthropomorphizing it, and treating it like something with an actual opinion or an unquestionable source-of-truth. The "I asked ChatGPT" comments should be treated the same as "I put it into Google and this was the first result": it's just line noise and doesn't add anything to the conversation. If you don't have anything to add yourself, why comment at all?
In 2010s Google I could type in a query, and it would redirect me to a human-written answer on something like StackOverflow with hopefully the right answer; in 2024 ChatGPT you can type in a query and it'll mash together some relevant human-written snippets into something which is hopefully coherent, relevant, and correct. Sure, it's "just" a Markov chain generator on steroids, but it's still giving you useful output.
I do agree that it is a bit worrying to what extent people are anthropomorphizing it, and treating it like something with an actual opinion or an unquestionable source-of-truth. The "I asked ChatGPT" comments should be treated the same as "I put it into Google and this was the first result": it's just line noise and doesn't add anything to the conversation. If you don't have anything to add yourself, why comment at all?