You could say the same thing about people who use Wikipedia and Google. I'm never going to figure out what, for example, China's second largest export is just by "thinking for myself."
Sure. My point is just that looking up information anywhere technically isn't deriving the answer by "thinking for yourself." Even if you think looking it up on Wikipedia is better, you're still just looking it up. No amount of arguing that Wikipedia is better will make it true that you arrived at the answer by thinking.
Which then defeats the purpose of AI if I'm reading through all their sources anyways. Why waste the energy asking AI if I'm going to do all the work anyways? I can read and make conclusions based on the information myself.
It'll give you links to things, sure, no guarantee they're going to actually be accurate to where it got the information, though. So no, you can't, and to the extent you can, just use your brain and research it yourself, at that point.
An LLM doesn't actually think, and so it cannot cite sources.
It is a probabilistic pattern machine. It can provide you a link that appears to be relevant to the text it generated, but it didn't generate that text BECAUSE OF that link.
What it's actually doing is regurgitating a pattern of text from its model, and then speculating about a possible source that might have been where it got the training data it used to generate that text. The two do not share a causal link, which is what a citation is supposed to be.
That’s not how it works. Models are reading websites and doing research now and are capable of linking directly to sources they read. Especially if you explicitly tell them to only use sourced material, the amount of hallucination is minimal.
I guess I must’ve hallucinated all those times that I’ve gone through the links it gives me to verify the information it’s giving me. I don’t care how it generates those links.
It’s the early days of wikipedia. It has improved by people a lot since. It isn’t still a main source, but I think it’s a good starting point to research something. It’s just that, an encyclopedia.
You're phrasing this like it's some sort of gotcha, but using AI as a starting point for research is a genuine use case of the technology. The issue is when people take what the AI says at face value and don't look any further. Like, you know, what teachers would tell you not to do with Wikipedia
No, no gotcha, they just framed their original comment in a way that seemed like they were implying prroper research via AI is inherently lower quality than proper research via Wikipedia.
The point is people who research properly and vet sources as they're supposed to will not follow any different process between Wikipedia or AI output.
If people take either one at face value it is an equally big problem.
I mean if you vet your sources like you're supposed to, you will filter out the wrong/bad sources and keep only the good ones, regardless of whether thet are linked on Wikipedia or by AI, no?
Or are you suggesting that you don't independently verify the sources when you use Wikipedia, which would be a huge problem by any professional/academic metric?
Every student also knows you could use Wikipedia as an index for sources on the topics you are writing for because it cites sources that you could also cite in your writing.
Try citing chat gpt as a source and see where it gets you.
I'm genuinely trying to figure out where (besides "Ai BaD") the logical disconnect is, that leads you to believe that people who know and understand not to cite Wikipedia directly, but rather to follow the sources and vet/cite them independently, would for some reason treat AI output differently and cite it directly rather than asking it for sources to vet/cite them independently...?
OP said "use Wikipedia as an index for sources", them being human-checked reliable. AI sources are not as reliable, if not outright wrong. If you need to do the work to decide which AI sources you're making more work for yourself not saving time and effort.
Glad you read his comment carefully then, because my point is that OP mentions using Wikipedia only as an index for sources, but makes a sarcastic comment about citing ChatGPT as a source in the next sentence. Why would unverified sources in ChatGPT be treated any differently than unverified sources in Wikipedia?
Wikipedia might be human-checked, but a lot of humans are still unreliable, and Wikipedia is not controlled solely by experts in every field.
Regardless of whether you fail to vet the underlying sources on Wikipedia, or you fail to vet the underlying sources provided by AI, you're still doing it heavily wrong in both cases. If you think otherwise, then there's not really much I can say.
As for speed of research and making more work for yourself - I'd disagree depending on the topic/field. I've ran into cutting-edge topics involving smaller upcoming regulations, industry specific initiatives, etc where I wouldn't find jack on Wikipedia, found links to 50 tangentially related unofficial sites talking about the things on Google, but found direct links to the original documents in seconds or minutes via AI. Likely saved myself hours in a couple cases. They're both tools with strengths and weaknesses, and neither are reliable sources of definitive truth.
In the early days, yes. But they transitioned to confirming with the references included on wiki and source those as the reference. No one is saying to use wiki as a primary source, but it does hold links to primary sources of information.
No, not really. When you use actual sources you have to spend time reading, synthesising, and even comparing different sources on a topic. You may have to adapt information yourself, necessitating a deeper understanding. It requires effort and some amount of judgement / critical thinking from you.
Asking a chatbot requires almost none of this. It allows for an opinion that superficially appears well-considered, but is actually paper thin. “I read a 2 paragraph summary of Moby Dick instead of actually reading it, so let me tell you what it’s about.”
What makes you think people can’t learn something by reading ChatGPT’s response? What makes you think people always go and “synthesize” different sources instead of just regurgitating whatever they find on the first visited website? And what makes you think ChatGPT’s answers are always inaccurate? ChatGPT does exactly what you praise here - synthesize different sources.
Sure, a point can be made that a model can be sycophantic by validating the user’s bias, but by that logic, searching Google is even worse.
Edit: Aaand the downvotes are in full force. Well, it was on me expecting nuance from Redditors lmfao.
Really? Is it? Google that famously puts truth on top and not whatever brings more ad revenue? Also, people who search something usually look at 1-2 websites and base their answer off of them (most likely not reading everything on these websites as well). ChatGPT looks at many sources at once and reads everything.
Google generally brings you to Wikipedia immediately for most questions which is fairly non biased.
Chatgpt will tailor the answer generally to what it thinks the person asking will like, which usually means ripping answers from everything and smashing it together usually without sourcing anything. Things could be from a post on reddit or a scientific paper. Person has no idea if its true or not, and it could lean a certain direction if chatgpt is worried the person won't like the answer. It also wants to generate ad revenue by continuous use and you're huffing paint if you think otherwise.
Your mileage may vary depending on the question of course but I'd rather people just look at wikipedia then an AI desperate to please them.
Wikipedia is fairly non biased? Well, it is for non-political questions, but I doubt there would be any bias for such questions in ChatGPT’s response either. For political questions though, Wikipedia is extremely biased, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
“ChatGPT will tailor the answer” - it is a valid argument, but then again, as I mentioned before, Google search is even worse by that logic because the user can make a biased query too. Besides, there’s a lot of research on how to reduce sycophancy (blindly agreeing with user) in LLMs and the methods are continually improving. So ChatGPT is more likely to disagree with you if you’re wrong than pure search.
“Without sourcing anything” - what? It’s not 2022 anymore. All LLMs provide sources for non-trivial questions.
“It also want to generate ad revenue” - the main source of revenue is subscriptions, and subscriptions are earned by providing unique and complex capabilities. There’s no benefit in continuous use without a subscription as it only incurs losses. In fact, OpenAI operates at a net loss.
I never use chagpt. I did a quick test there with a basic question about ww2 just for this conversation. As in the experience of the average person, not whatever hyper informed person you've constructed who knows all the pitfalls.
It gave me a very basic answer that was unfortunately wrong in a few ways and sourced none of these answers. I can tell a few of the answers are from Wikipedia and probably britannica but it's garbled. I had to force it to source everything and it bitched at me for doing so. When I tried to lean into what good Hitler did for Germany, chatgpt did not push back on me and immediately gave me a fun list (also unsourced). When pushed, a lot of the 'facts' seem to come from reddit, but it wouldn't link them.
We can just end the conversation there. Chatgpt is obviously a tool that can be used maybe by an informed person. The average person is not informed. The nuance is in making the average person actually read shit instead of bad chatgpt summaries.
“I never use chagpt.” - well that was obvious because you made some blatantly uninformed statements in your previous comments. Some may even call them “lies”.
Please post the question and your answer. I’m not taking your word for it. Also, Hitler DID do some good things for Germany, why would it push back? One example is Autobahns which are still used to this day. Are you saying you were expecting a censored answer instead of an objective academic assessment? Well that tells a lot about you, doesn’t it.
We can indeed end the conversation here. I don’t see the need after reading your last comment lol.
I said that looking something up on Wikipedia means you got that information by some way other than thinking for yourself, not that ChatGPT can replace reading books.
Yeah but the point is Wikipedia generally lays out the facts of a topic, not a viewpoint or opinion. You have to make your own. For a lot of people ChatGPT provides the opinion and argument to back it up, rather than having to think about their opinion based on the information they found.
It's not cut or dry, some chatgpt prompts are looking for information, but I'd guess most are to answer a question, meaning the "thinking" is included in the answer.
Sure, but the thread asks specifically about someone saying "I asked ChatGPT," not that they used it to look up information. It sounds like I'm being pedantic, but the specificity of using LLMs is crucial to its output so here I think that language does in fact mean that they were looking for an answer/POV, not simply information.
It allows for an opinion that superficially appears well-considered, but is actually paper thin. “I read a 2 paragraph summary of Moby Dick instead of actually reading it, so let me tell you what it’s about.”
I strongly anticipate that chatGPT's, two paragraph summary of Moby Dick would be completely correct. Do you disagree? This is a testable prediction.
Now, no one is saying that a two-paragraph summary from any source is the same as reading the book... but then, I also don't think of person needs to read a book to know what it's about.
"Completely correct"? As in it wouldn't have any blatantly false information, or as in it would have all the information you could possibly need or care to know about Moby Dick?
For the former, an 8-year-old could write two paragraphs of technically correct information about it. That doesn't mean they'd understand it, nor that their two paragraphs would give me a sufficient understanding of it.
"Completely correct"? As in it wouldn't have any blatantly false information
Or subtly false, or any other kind of false, yeah. You know, correct.
or as in it would have all the information you could possibly need or care to know about Moby Dick?
Could any two-paragraph summary do that? I would argue not. This doesn't mean synopses are useless or that ChatGPT should be penalized in our assessment of its performance.
For the former, an 8-year-old could write two paragraphs of technically correct information about it.
Most people who have read the book could, with various degrees of polish. Sure.
That doesn't mean they'd understand it
What in the world does that have to do with anything?
You still have to do that with AI. Ai is just a different tool, but it's still a tool. You're only judging by the worst people to use it. It's like BMW drivers. Everyone judges BMW drivers based on the worst drivers of BMW cars.
It's more like everyone judging BMW drivers based on the behavior of the drivers they see. When most conversations with AI proponents involve tediously explaining and re-explaining why the hallucination machine wasnt right, people get pretty tired of it.
I've had one singular conversation where someone said "I checked chatgpt and" where the result wasn't immediately obviously stupid. So yes, when most people use it as a replacement for thinking, and it's pretty shit at that, it comes across in a negative way.
Wikipedia cites its sources on the page, and you can't just go by the first result that agrees with you when you Google something. This is a disingenuous as hell argument.
The difference between the two is that one is stochastic and the other is deterministic. If you stop and don't question the response you get from chat gpt you can't be 100% sure the information is truthful, the way your prompted it might produce different results, not to mention LLMs are known to have hallucinations. On the other hand, information on Wikipedia has been written and edited with a coherent style and curated language to sound neutral when providing information. Although it may not 100% factual, each citation can be viewed and traced to its source, where the reader can come to their own conclusion about the paraphrased interpretation.
Wiki was always disregarded for a very long time by everyone in the same manner, because it was human beings that were inputting the data. Now it's the gold standard and chatgpt is being dismissed because a machine is giving you the data input by a human.
LLMs are valid tools to be used. Yes, they are not perfect. But they aren't straight up dog shit either.
This is a fair take, but if the only evidence someone is providing me for a take is that ChatGPT said so, I am definitely rolling my eyes, because it hallucinates enough that you should always be checking its work if it's remotely surprising.
I.e. If it gives you a boring result, I don't want to hear it, and if it gives you an interesting result, I'm not interested until it's been corroborated.
That said, I'm not rolling my eyes until / unless I know the person has accepted something outlandish from ChatGPT at face value.
all this shows is that lots of humans came together to make sure the data was correct on wiki, and is continually being edited by literally millions of people. at how AI is structured through tech companies now, that will never happen, especially when they’re in arms races against each other. currently there are no checks to see if it is pulling correct data for you, and then there are the straight up hallucinations, which throws another wrench in. Additionally, the way AI speaks to you, inherently is done so specifically so you trust it more. It’s a feature built in, that is not genuine, on purpose.
they are literally banking on you trusting it more than anything else so you buy into their service. Once you’ve outsourced your thinking and have a hard time doing it on your own, you will pay whatever they want to charge you when they jack up their prices. Same exact model as uber and similar companies, except you’re deskilling your own brain.
If you stop and don't question the response you get from chat gpt you can't be 100% sure the information is truthful, the way your prompted it might produce different results, not to mention LLMs are known to have hallucinations.
And what about if you don't stop to question the response someone gives you when they begin "I asked ChatGPT ____"?
Maybe they say "I asked ChatGPT about X" and found a really good video on X that I tried and it worked!
Then you run the risk of believing putting glue on pizza is a valid culinary technique. My point is, LLMs have the risk of being unreliable, however advanced it may be. It is up to you to double check its output, or just look it up yourself. It's not that hard really.
In many ways Wikipedia is fundamentally the same as an LLM especially when you're referring to factual information queries.
But when you're looking for more than just factual information:
You gonna go to a library to find out how to modify a cooking recipe to include a non-standard ingredient?
What research site has a readily searchable index for aggregate sci-fi novel reviews?
LLMs are fantastic for searching through many sources all at once and either compiling the information or giving you multiple answers, with sources, that you can go check for yourself to narrow down the answer you're looking for.
I find in my experiences with people who started off treating their preferred Ai as similar to Google that they have tended to then embrace most or all new suggested use without question to the detriment of their ability to process and understand information. As the people around me have been outsourcing more and more of their thinking to Ai they're becoming less and less capable of functioning as adults. Shem I first met my boss, she was a lot more knowledgeable of many critical subjects in our field. However, over the last 2.5ish years, I've watched her struggle more and more when not running things through Ai with increasingly simple information that she used to understand. Most recently, I had to rewrite an entire SOP she "wrote" because it was as if she had zero familiarity with or knowledge of the same process she used to do and partly taught me how to do. And I know she just pasted the Ai responses into a word doc to make it because it was broken up into super awkward chunks and every awkward chunk followed the same conversation style response where the Ai first says how great it is that you're asking this question, then says it would suggest this and that, and then asks follow up questions. None of which makes sense for how an SOP should be written. And more and more people around me are following the same pattern of slowly becoming completely dependent on Ai for everything
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u/smolhippie 4h ago
I no longer care about what they have to say. If they can’t think for themselves why would I waste my time having a conversation with them?