The Perils of ChatGPT

So in an effort to defend Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, one of those rigorous intellectuals who staff “The View” cited Woodrow Wilson’s pardon of Hunter deButts. The problem was, that such a person (deButts, not Wilson) never existed. When this was pointed out to her, she sniffed that they should take it up with ChatGPT. Apart from what that may reveal about her journalistic integrity, what does that tell us about the usefulness of AI that represents a compilation of old wives tales, rumors, deliberate lies and uneducated opinion? I remember the days when people used to claim the internet was going to make us smarter.

I doubt the internet has make us any smarter. Society would collapse if they didn’t have cell phones to help them get through daily routines. Of course I’m a Luddite. It did probably make us more efficient.

EDIT: I wonder where trump get his misinformation. The term AI would be a misnomer.

Any opportunity to dis the journalistic acumen of ladies on The View is an opportunity I like!

I find it personally offensive for those women to be referred to as journalists. Ugh.

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Originally Posted by KayLR

I find it personally offensive for those women to be referred to as journalists. Ugh.

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I don’t watch The View but have been seeing clips from The View in the last few months of this election cycle. In one I was VERY surprised to hear Joy Baher refer to herself as a journalist and to pontificate about how accurate they have to be in that role.

I don’t mind if they sit around a table and shoot the breeze, offering their opinions about world events. I mind that they do seem to consider themselves journalists. That just isn’t right.

Good Lord, this is the AI that’s going to be running the country any moment now? Look at what it told me today. If you can’t read it, it says in part “… as of the current date, February 12 2025, Joe Biden is still serving as President…”

someone needs to tell Donald Trump.

Attachment 6233

Seriously, ChatGPT is idiotic. I’ve asked three times now who is the current president of the United States is, and it keeps telling me Joe Biden is the president.

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Originally Posted by iris lilies

Seriously, ChatGPT is idiotic. I’ve asked three times now who is the current president of the United States is, and it keeps telling me Joe Biden is the president.

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Siri knows the correct current prez.

Insanity.

It took 4 tries to get Chat GBT to admit that the current President of the United States is not Joe Biden.

So, then, thinking it had put the correct names into its database, I asked who the vice president of the United States currently is. ChatGPT told me that the current vice president is Kamala Harris.

I yelled at ChatGPT and called it a few choice names, and told it to think again.

It came back and apologized to me and told me that the current vice president of the United States is Mike Pence.

For God sake, these are uber simple factual questions. How can this supposedly sophisticated piece of software not know the answers?

But boy, it sure does know that trans women are women! It has its priorities straight.
/s

Attachment 6234

Attachment 6235

It’s likely you all cannot read the screens but I’ll just tell you that ChatGPT is telling me that Kamala Harris is vice president of the United States and then Mike Pence is vice president of the United States because Donald Trump would’ve chosen him again to run 2024.

Now I have to wonder if I’m using some kind of hoax ChatGPT site. The real thing cannot be this stupid. Why don’t you all test a ChatGPT site and see what you find when it answer his questions about who is the president and vice president in the United States.

Here is the URL I’m using which makes me think at this point. It must be a hoax site.

ChatGPT.com

You do realize that most ChatGPT models are trained up to a certain cutoff point in time?

It's not a universal tool...

I just used an example in my class, about the Gouda cheese advertisement from the Superbowl, where it claimed that 40-60% of the cheese eaten in the world is Gouda.

We have a big emphasis on AI in this class, unfortunately, as that was how the university dealt with it, "responsible use." I am trying to point out there is no such thing.

Here's what I just got from the free version of ChatGPT :

When does your training data end
ChatGPT said:
My training data goes up until June 2024, but I can look up recent information if you need something more up-to-date!

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Originally Posted by bae

You do realize that most ChatGPT models are trained up to a certain cutoff point in time?

It's not a universal tool...

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No I did not know this data is not current. The answer should have been something like “I do not know who is the President of the United States since my training is only current through June 2024 and there was a Presidential election in November 2024.”

I only played around with it because someone on the MMM site with very sophisticated medical knowledge and health needs claims she is using
chatGPT to help her figure out her current health situation. She led me to believe it was more advanced than it appears to me to be.

It is a poor craftsman who blames their tools.

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Originally Posted by bae

It is a poor craftsman who blames their tools.

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Haha, well, for sure, I won’t be using it for anything important.

I'm at a market research conference right now (sitting with a cup of coffee having reached my intensive people-interaction limit for the morning, with 6 more hours to go).

I came to learn how AI is being applied to market research tasks, and one of the things I learned in one of the sessions is that Chat GPT "lies"--you cannot trust the information. You have to fact-check it. So it was supremely stupid for the staff person of The View to fall back on the "journalistic integrity" of AI.

I just had a creepy conversation with ChatGPT. Not expecting much, I asked it to tell me about a particular aspect of contemporary art I am seeing. It gave me the answer that I pretty much suspected, but it also added interpretation of the artistic technique that I haven’t thought about. And then it asked me questions about the art I’m seeing. And I answered those questions. And then it commented on my connection with the Art and complimented me and asked more questions and I answered those questions.

damn that was creepy, it was like talking with a real expert.

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Originally Posted by iris lilies

I just had a creepy conversation with ChatGPT. Not expecting much, I asked it to tell me about a particular aspect of contemporary art I am seeing. It gave me the answer that I pretty much suspected, but it also added interpretation of the artistic technique that I haven’t thought about. And then it asked me questions about the art I’m seeing. And I answered those questions. And then it commented on my connection with the Art and complimented me and asked more questions and I answered those questions.

damn that was creepy, it was like talking with a real expert.

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I know! DH uses CoPilot, and the conversations are way too real. Definitely the guy who wrote the screenplay for Her was on to something.

I recently came upon my wife screaming obscenities into her phone. She was unhinged by an unholy union of AI and telemarketing. Over a period of a week or two, she got over a hundred calls from multiple numbers selling a Medicare gap policy she wasn’t eligible for or interested in. The system kept taking different tacks trying to get her to buy, apologized and promised to take her of the list, but kept relentlessly calling back.

This reminds me of a scam call we got a couple of days ago. It has nothing to do with AI.


DH was targeted by a “FedEx “employee who claimed they couldn’t deliver a package because they didn’t know where we were. This is ridiculous because we get regular shipments via FedEx.


But I can’t figure out what the scam is. The caller kept asking DH for a better directions to our house, do we live in a one story house, was it a house or an apartment,etc..


Finally, I grabbed the phone and told him just deliver the package, but the FedEx guy said he couldn’t talk to me, he had to talk to the recipient of the package, DH.

I can’t figure out this scam was about other than testing DH to see how open he is to answering personal questions. Any ideas anyone?

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Originally Posted by iris lilies

This reminds me of a scam call we got a couple of days ago. It has nothing to do with AI.


DH was targeted by a “FedEx “employee who claimed they couldn’t deliver a package because they didn’t know where we were. This is ridiculous because we get regular shipments via FedEx.


But I can’t figure out what the scam is. The caller kept asking DH for a better directions to our house, do we live in a one story house, was it a house or an apartment,etc..


Finally, I grabbed the phone and told him just deliver the package, but the FedEx guy said he couldn’t talk to me, he had to talk to the recipient of the package, DH.

I can’t figure out this scam was about other than testing DH to see how open he is to answering personal questions. Any ideas anyone?

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Yeah, I think you're right. Those definitely are sketchy questions for a "FedEx guy".. I don't have any answers for what he was trying to get out of it, though.

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Originally Posted by LDAHL

I recently came upon my wife screaming obscenities into her phone. She was unhinged by an unholy union of AI and telemarketing. Over a period of a week or two, she got over a hundred calls from multiple numbers selling a Medicare gap policy she wasn’t eligible for or interested in. The system kept taking different tacks trying to get her to buy, apologized and promised to take her of the list, but kept relentlessly calling back.

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Was this on a landline phone? We have recently put the following message on our answering machine:

"Friends and family, please listen to this entire message. Due to the increase in telemarketer and scam calls, all calls to this phone are now being screened. That said, please speak slowly and clearly, leaving your name, number and a message, and your call will be returned."

Almost 100% hang-ups! Blood donation centers will leave a message. LOL.

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Originally Posted by happystuff

Was this on a landline phone? We have recently put the following message on our answering machine:

"Friends and family, please listen to this entire message. Due to the increase in telemarketer and scam calls, all calls to this phone are now being screened. That said, please speak slowly and clearly, leaving your name, number and a message, and your call will be returned."

Almost 100% hang-ups! Blood donation centers will leave a message. LOL.

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No, it was a cell phone.

We don’t have a landline.

Frankly, with all the spam and scam calls, you shouldn’t even be bothering to answer the phone unless you know who it is. Change the settings on your mobile phone to only ring for contacts. I know plenty of people who constantly complain about the calls, but still pick them up. They have no reason to complain if they’re still answering the phone. Older folks need to get out of the mindset that you HAVE to pick up the phone if it rings.

We still have a landline, and we had switched from Verizon to Oona phone service last year. We recently had to replace our cordless phones, and the new model had a smartscreen feature. I programmed all our regular callers into the system. If a caller is not in the system, they are prompted to state their name, the system announces it to us, and we can answer or not. Spammers and telemarketers just hang up. It's a beautiful feature.

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Originally Posted by Tradd

Frankly, with all the spam and scam calls, you shouldn’t even be bothering to answer the phone unless you know who it is. Change the settings on your mobile phone to only ring for contacts. I know plenty of people who constantly complain about the calls, but still pick them up. They have no reason to complain if they’re still answering the phone. Older folks need to get out of the mindset that you HAVE to pick up the phone if it rings.

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I am on 8 different boards and do board business regularly. While I don’t get a lot of calls since most contacts are via email, I do get them occasionally from people who are not in my contacts.

but I don’t carry my phone. I pick up about half the time mainly because it rings in on a iPad that I’m on but very often do not pick up whether text or phone.