[sosodev]

Do you think that other sources are infallible? Almost every source is wrong sometimes. ChatGPT is as good as my professors were in college. They would regularly say things that were just completely incorrect but were knowledgeable and correct often enough to be helpful.

[worrycue]

Your professors generally don’t make stuff up if they don’t know something. Your professors are also more likely to catch on if something doesn’t make sense - unlike ChatGPT which can’t seem to reason effectively because most of the time it doesn’t know what’s it’s talking about.*

* Maybe it has the ability to reason, maybe not. Maybe it just needs more information - after all it’s trying to model reality with just the words used to describe it. Or maybe it really can’t reason at all, a limitation of its algorithm, and has to rely on having arguments/explanations already memorised - which seems to be mostly what it does now. Either way so far it hasn’t demonstrated that it’s all that good at reasoning.

[sosodev]

Some of them most certainly did make stuff up. Ego prevents many people from admitting that they don't know something.

I also interacted with some who wouldn't even admit to being wrong when they were confronted with facts. So I don't know that I would say they catch on either.

[worrycue]

I feel most won’t risk it. It’s less embarrassing to say you don’t know than to be wrong.

[geraneum]

Pilots make mistakes sometimes. I, the bike rider also make mistake sometimes. Therefore I can fly an airplane and I will be as good.

Jokes aside, making mistakes is not a good common factor in order to evaluate if two different systems can be practically interchanged. You need more. What type of mistakes? In what situations, and how to mitigate them. This is a surprisingly common misunderstanding running wild here. You cannot even switch the places of two humans, even two professors in real life using this line of reasoning.

[majormajor]

How do you know that ChatGPT is as good as your professors in college? How do you know that they aren't just as good as a cable news pundit? Or a relatively uninformed Reddit commenter?

[sosodev]

How do you compare anybody like that?

All I'm saying is that ChatGPT is knowledgeable. It has absorbed a ton of information and can distribute that information fairly well. I don't think that can be argued with.

Yes, it's completely wrong sometimes but the exact same can be said for any human (my professors, the cable news pundit, average redditor).

To say I can't learn from it doesn't make any sense. I have learned everything from flawed sources. We all have.

[adamredwoods]

> I have learned everything from flawed sources. We all have.

Sure, some historical books in the US South are wildly inaccurate!

This is why we deal with multiple sources, as well as defining, validating, and exploring our sources. ChatGPT does not do this. It does not pull from definable sources, it is an LLM that outputs text based on statistical word sequences from an almost bottomless source.

You can learn from it, but the sources may be sketchy, and it will mix source biases. I tried to ask it for sources on the fall of ancient Rome:

>> As an AI language model, I don't have the ability to consult sources or remember my previous responses. However, the information I provided about the fall of Rome is widely accepted in historical scholarship and can be found in many reputable sources such as encyclopedias, textbooks, and academic articles.

Personally, I think we need to tune the LLMs according to use. Creative? Then it one way. More factual, the other way. This does mean we would need to know sources for LLMs.

[majormajor]

> How do you compare anybody like that?

I was thinking maybe you had some specific metrics or examples in mind since it's your own comparison...

The rest of your post reads like the old "there are two possible outcomes therefore the odds are 50/50" probability fallacy.

Do I believe it's more useful than chatroullette? Yes. Does that mean it's as useful as a college professor on a given subject? That's a very different claim, and would need some serious evaluation and demonstration.

[JustBreath]

Other sources are fallible as well, but also less likely to make big mistakes and more likely to cover the major pitfalls of a hobby/area of expertise by virtue of actual experience and understanding of the subject matter. (versus statistical probabilities in word choice)

Also ChatGPT has no consistent internal sense of self and is highly sensitive to input. You can convince it that just about anything is true if you aren't careful about how you phrase your input.

[cs02rm0]

Reminds me of people being up in arms when Wikipedia turned up because anyone could contribute. Seems like the same thing is still happening.

[Jensson]

Wikipedia works since the world is full of pedantic sticklers. If you remove the pedantic sticklers then wikipedia would no longer work, it would just be full of bias or bullshit, so we should be thankful for all the pedantic sticklers out there.

[sosodev]

It is quite similar, isn't it? To say that a potentially flawed source of information is worthless is a silly extreme.

[throwaway675309]

Unfortunately this says more about your alma mater than anything else.