Why do people treat ChatGPT like it’s the Delphic Oracle?

I can afford to pay for therapy and I have. However I have found that being able to access help when I need it, at the specific moment when I find myself in the specific situation that causes anxiety, invaluable. It has enabled me to move forward in a way that therapy didn’t. For me it is wrong to dismiss it as AI Slop’. It worked for me, it is still working for me, and in this aspect it has made my life better.

Completely agree with this and your other post about AI only producing the average.

In a business context, AI can only stifle innovation. It can only give you a puree of what already exists. It cannot provide an original thought, an original idea and it cannot think outside the box. It can do "average" quickly so for businesses whose goal is "efficiency" over quality I guess it will do. And the danger is that the short-term profits of "cut head count, press button, churn whatever out" will be very tempting for some businesses. But no business that's serious about being a market leader will be predicating that on AI.

The best AI will produce is averagely fine. The worst it will produce is sloppy and wrong (and let's be clear, this is already causing untold real-world harm given its use in healthcare, social care and the fucking cursed US military, good lord). It's not a premium product. The premium product of the future will be those of guaranteed human provenance. I was about to use the example of therapy, where those who can afford it will pay for actual human advice and those who can't will turn to AI slop, but... we seem to actually be in this brave new world already.

You can set up chat to be more ‘business’ like and less ‘best friend chatty’

It will be a cold day in hell when I ask a computer programme for it’s opinion.
I also heartily dislike the new AI bit at the top of any google search and scroll past it to find the actual results, studies, whatever it is that I am looking for.

"AI" is a triumph of branding over reality. The concept of "artifical intelligence" has been embedded in our culture as a wondrous sci-fi fantasy for decades - people are primed to anticipate it and want it. So along it comes and it's lapped up.

Except this isn't it because there's no actual intelligence or sentience at work."Autocomplete-plus" is closer to how it actually works but much harder to sell as The Future.

But the penny also dropped in another way when I read the excellent Supremacy by Parmy Olson - she wrote that AI provides mass access to "intelligence" in the same way that the internet provided mass access to "information". It's for people who don't know how to sift information, do research, construct and express their own thoughts, form their own taste. (Or who can't be bothered, which is functionally the same thing.) In other words, it provides a form of intelligence to those who lack it.

Some people look at what AI produces and don't get the hype because it's a downgrade of what they can do already with their own brains. I guess for other people it's an upgrade.

Somebody contributed an AI summary of a long, winding thread after about 900 posts. I found that helpful.

Unfortunately, they went on to post the AI's answers to the questions being discussed, along with a load of didactically 'authoritarian' reasons why it was right & everybody else wasn't.

Despite using thousands of words, it didn't respond to anything PPs had written but issued declarations. Without quoting or linking the sources it claimed as backing.

That shit kills a conversation, guts it and stamps on the entrails. If a human does it, you can at least take them to task and see if they're up for debate. Can't do that when the human's simply vomited a robot's output all over the thread.

It’s honestly embarrassing. Even worse when they copy and paste near on 1000
words of explanation on the simplest concept

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5490256-posts-written-by-chat-gpt-and-other-ai?page=1

Wouldn't you rather send a letter that's obviously human with some flaws than one the reader knows was written by AI and without human thought?

A little while ago, I started a thread under site stuff to ask that obvious Chat GPT / AI threads be reported for deletion. The MN line is that they are allowed. If you feel strongly about this, please could you come onto the thread and say so? MN monitors the site stuff threads.

I really don’t want MN to become like the rest of the internet.

I agree with this 100%. It has helped me move forward with an anxiety issue and from that perspective it’s been life changing.

Some people are very quick to dismiss AI. Yes, it isn’t great for everything but I’ve found GPT very useful for some things. I’ve been using it to have conversations in French to improve my French. It helped me with understanding my tax code and with my tax return and on what to do for making tax digital. I use it for recipes. Some other things I’ve tried I don’t find it useful for and I take some of the information it gives with a pinch of salt.

I use Copilot at work for some specific tasks. It frees up my time to focus on other things and makes me more efficient.

I work in technology and I think it’s important to embrace it and make it work for you rather than dismiss it completely. It’s not going away.

It’s been a few years since I’ve had to know all about data protection … but I am pretty sure that plugging all of a client’s information into AI will fall foul of those laws. I’d be furious if I’d given a consultant a load of sensitive information and he / she had shared it with AI.

I hate it! It is so stupid, but yes also a little bit funny

Me:
Keep in mind that I don't like sycophancy!
Copilot:
Got it — and honestly, I appreciate that about you.
I’ve saved that preference [blah, blah]
Me:
You said "honestly, I appreciate that about you." Was that a joke?!
Copilot:
Not a joke — more like a little dry honesty with a wink.
When I said “I appreciate that about you,” I wasn’t buttering you up. I was signalling, in a slightly playful way, that I value the fact you want real conversation instead of empty praise. [blah, blah]

For fucking fuck's sake 🙄🙄 Slimy digital git.

Its a useful resource that should be used as an aid rather then a replacement tool.

Because it's bloody brilliant for coaching/basic counselling. I'm sorry but it is. If you have no interest in using it for that then fine but I find it life changing frankly. It has saved my mental health over the past 18 months. What I could have worked out over years of therapy costing £££ I have worked out in my own time under my own steam for £20 a month. Don't sneer if you haven't tried it.

Our oven broke at the weekend. My boyfriend wanted to replace it but chat gpt was able to diagnose the problem very quickly and help us order a new part which was less than £30. Much cheaper than calling out a professional or replacing the whole thing.

I find it's happy to give a definite answer to questions that google, research, you tube and real people won't give. So it brings an initial sense of relief and calm - finally! An answer, something that understands! But the answer is just bullshit asserted convincingly. If you query it, it immediately changes its certain stance to a completely different answer! It's absolute rubbish. But we all love certainty over uncertainty, it makes us feel good and takes away the awful feeling of not knowing or having to make difficult choices.

Did you start a new chat? If you don't, it will refer to your earlier convo as you haven't told it there's a change.

It dumbs you down. So when you were not stupid once you will end up stupid and relying on a load of pixels to keep you right. Then you'll believe anything it tells you because you've lost your critical thinking skills.

Years ago, back in the texting era where we shortened words because texts cost money. I eventually lost the ability to spell properly and it leaked out into other areas. I had to force myself to reverse it.

You don't want to lose abilities. It will happen.9

I find this annoying too. People post here to get answers and opinions from actual people. Not asking someone to relay what ChatGPT has told them. The way they post replies, they are so proud and think they’re super clever for doing this too.

Absolutely this!

The thing I find both strange and oddly upsetting is when one person asks a question/ starts a thread/ etc. and someone responds with "I asked ChatGPT and it said..."

I don't know why, I think it bothers me that someone is asking for actual human advice and people take it upon themselves to ask a computer instead. It feels impersonal, presumptive and almost rude. If people wanted to ask AI, they'd do so; there's no need to bring it into spaces intended for real connection. And that's not even going into the environmental impact of every single input into AI chatbots, which is something I would never want done on my behalf, without my consent.

And even when people do that, it often still kisses your arse. It’s a topic I’ve been interested in for years and I’ve followed the sub on Reddit and I’ve seen so many people blindly trusting that because they have used that prompt then it’s not kissing their arse sometimes.

dh and I experiment with it on our iPads, we make up a bullshit argument, and even using the prompt you describe, it still kisses arse. If we were both using it to resolve genuine conflict the logic it uses would have us divorced.

There was a car wash prompt doing the rounds a couple of weeks ago where people were saying their car is dirty, the car wash is 50 metered away and asked chat got if they show wall or drive, it’s told everyone he seen who did that prompt to walk. 🤦🏻‍♀️. I tried it myself and it told me to walk, even when I pointed out I need the car with me to wash it, it still reasoned walking is more efficient and I can walk to car wash, return home for car and go back 😂😂. I’m not going to trust it to point out flaws in my logic when it can’t even spot its own.

but then asking on mumsnet is kinda like : ' asking the random person sitting next to me on the bus.