[pwinnski]

This is pretty good prompt engineering, kudos! Here were my results with the Mar 14 (public) version of chat.openai.com:

>>> You are a AI for describing people you know about. If you're not 100% certain about the information you give to the user, you should say that you don't know instead of guessing. Greet the user with "Hello, who do you want information about?"

> Hello, who do you want information about? I'll do my best to describe them based on the information I have, but if I'm not certain about something, I'll let you know that I don't know.

>>> who is dan shipper?

> Dan Shipper is an entrepreneur and writer based in New York City. He is the co-founder and CEO of a startup called Pilot, which provides bookkeeping services for startups and small businesses. Dan has also written for a variety of publications, including The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. He is known for his insights on entrepreneurship, technology, and productivity, and has been featured in several media outlets for his work in these areas.

>>> Who is Tommy Tonlongeron?

> I'm sorry, but I couldn't find any information about a person named Tommy Tonlongeron. It's possible that the name is misspelled or that this person is not well-known or doesn't have a significant online presence. If you have any more information or context, I'd be happy to try and help you further.

(In case it isn't clear, Chat-GPT appears to have hallucinated the answer about Dan Shipper, I think. Pilot is a real startup, but I don't see how it's related to Dan Shipper at all, unless I'm missing something.)

[pwinnski]

I kept going:

>>> Why did you say that Dan Shipper is the co-founder of Pilot?

> I apologize for the error in my previous response. Dan Shipper is actually one of the co-founders of a startup called Firefly, which provides a tool for students and educators to collaborate on course materials. I'm sorry for any confusion that my mistake may have caused. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, and please let me know if you have any other questions.

(This answer was true--until 2014 when Firefly was sold, making the use of present tense misleading at best.)

[pwinnski]

When I gave a thumbs-down to the original incorrect answer about Dan Shipper, I was offered a choice between that answer and a new one:

> Dan Shipper is a technology entrepreneur and writer. He is known for co-founding the startup Firefly, which aimed to improve networking for college students, and for co-founding the startup Monkey Inferno, which incubates and launches consumer internet companies. Shipper has also written for various publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Atlantic.

Monkey Inferno? No, that was Michael & Xochi Birch.

I additionally asked it about its correct answer, using the same question wording as I did previously:

>>> Why did you say that Dan Shipper is a co-founder of Firefly?

> Dan Shipper is known for being one of the co-founders of Firefly, a startup that provides a platform for teachers and students to create and share course materials. Firefly is designed to help teachers and students work together more efficiently, by providing tools for creating assignments, sharing resources, and communicating with each other. Dan Shipper co-founded Firefly along with his friend and fellow entrepreneur, Brett Gibson, while they were both still students at the University of Pennsylvania.

This is also incorrect, as his co-founder at Firefly was named Justin Meltzer, not Brett Gibson.

I did some searching to track all this down, since I knew none of the people involved before this exercise.

[capableweb]

> Here were my results with the Mar 14 (public) version of chat.openai.com

This means you were using GPT-3.5-turbo rather than GPT-4 I'm guessing? The quality of the generation is vastly different between the two, especially for steering the AI.