No judgment

This morning, for the first time, I used ChatGPT for my actual research. It was for a rapid text entry system that I’m developing.

I told it “list the 100 most common 3 letter words.” Worked like a charm. And the resulting list was indeed very useful.

A little later I told it “list the 240 most common 3 letter words.” This time it started out ok, but after 37 words it just started printing some random list of three letter words in alphabetical order.

This second interaction felt all too familiar, in a bad way. Like I was conversing with a student eager to give an answer — any answer — even if the student didn’t know the material.

As it happened, a few hours later I ran into Yann LeCun. We chatted a while and I told him of my experience this morning. He wasn’t at all surprised.

He pointed out that ChatGPT doesn’t really have any idea what you are asking it. So it actually doesn’t care whether its search of its vast database comes up with something incorrect.

Yet another reminder that ChatBots are not at all intelligent in the human sense. In particular, they have no judgment. Still, they are very useful tools if you accept them for what they are.

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