Why do some people as Chat GTP everything like it’s the bloody Oracle?

[ChompandaGrazia]

I’m seeing this all over the place now. Someone has a simple question like ‘can anyone recommend a good cat food brand’ or ‘does anyone have a good chocolate brownie recipe’, or on a local Facebook group ‘does anyone know if the post office is open Saturday?, and someone will always respond that they asked Chat GPT and it said this…….

Why? All it does it look stuff up online and get things wrong. I knew someone who was planning to move towns. She had a load of houses to look at but rather than looking at a map or asking some local, me, what order make most sense, she asked Chat GPT . The order it gave her made no sense and two minutes looking at the map would show that.

It's alright for things that aren't that important like sorting out stuff for home but I wouldn't use it for proper things, I don't like it on forums as it makes the posts long and rambling, they are never short when it is used. Less is more.

Have you tried using it for meal plans and itineraries? It's absolutely brilliant

So far I've only used AI as a note taker for minutes in a meeting. I don't really know what else to use if for tbh.

No - I use my brain and do my own research! It’s half the fun of planning a trip

Ah. Yes. This I tend to agree with you on. Except maybe for scientific stuff or medical or data driven questions like ‘when did Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens both live on earth at the same time…

if it’s about shared experiences and spaces to rant etc AI would be weird to use

The title of your post doesn’t make sense.

I agree OP it’s embarrassing. I got a WhatsApp invitation to an engagement party that had been generated using ChatGPT. It’s unbelievably lazy and imo contributing to the mass loss of critical thinking and literary skills. It’s also terrible for the environment.

Some people have full on pararelationships with AI, it’s not funny, it’s a real worry

But what does your ‘research’ entail?

if it’s putting something in a search engine and then trawling through the resulting endless google results then I can’t see why you would think this was better

Probably women use it more than men, I couldn't see a man being bothered with it at home but then they seem to avoid mundane tasks like meal planning and itineraries

Sorry, it should be ‘why do they ask’ not ‘as’. A typo.

For me as an English teacher it saves loads of time when writing model paragraphs in different grades. Used to spend ages crafting them and now I just have to tweak. Probably saves me 3 or 4 hours a week. Thing is I can write them and have for years, but now there is a fantastic device that lets me have time for other things. My teaching has improved because I have more time to plan extra. Great for a differentiated worksheet too

How long ago did you ask that complex question? The LLMs are evolving literally week to week so whatever limitations it had then, it probably doesn't now.

What critical thinking and literary skills are required to invite someone to an engagement party?

Although if someone came on and said ‘what can I make for supper tonight with potato, a piece of Stilton , an onion, minced pork and a courgette’ AI would be a sensible tool. A replied could say ‘why not pop it into AI and see what it says or they could helpfully do it for them.

Well that’s exactly my point, it’s not a difficult piece of prose to put together and yet it was outsourced to AI. Incredibly lazy and impersonal. Clear communication is a skill and the only way to get better at it is to practice. Particularly young people, aren’t practicing because they chuck it in AI. It’s like they are missing the whole point.

You can do a whole undergrad course without learning anything if you use AI well enough.

You could ask it to write your wedding vows but what about being able to express your feelings.

Honestly to be it boils down to “what about the human experience”. We are losing it, and connection, every day and replacing it with a chat bot.

I completely agree with you there on the time saving aspects and have used it in a similar way myself.

It’s when people use it to answer someone else’s question I have a problem with.

I think some people just like being helpful and part of the conversation so they give you the AI answer but then also credit the AI so they can’t be blamed if the advice is wrong.

I’m quite proud of my researching skills on the internet and for the vast majority of my queries I will search myself as CGPT really doesn’t have all the answers. It will search based on its interpretation of what it thinks you mean and you will have to keep revising your ask until you get what you want - may as well just use your own noggin and search yourself. Out of curiousity, once I found my answer/what I was looking for, I asked CGPT the same Q and both times it left out the info/product I was after.

I really hope people use it by exception as I do. You also learn the info more in context as it were as will have trawled through different threads and learnt a little from each one rather than just having the info dumped right in front of you so all you ever know is what the creators tell you. Whereas eg if I’m trying to find out about a particular alternative treatment for a minor ailment, I will likely have learnt more than just the type of medication. I will have learnt about the human body, why ailment may have started, what other complimentary stiff could be done. And yes, AI will ask follow up Qs to eventually get to this same info but I just think the info sticks in your head longer if you searched for it yourslef!

often you can get a quick and easy answer on ChatGPT.

much like you can also google the answer.

I guess it's people who use the group a lot, and want to appear helpful, but I agree it's not in those situations.

I do find it helpful with my EHCP admin, but I would not trust it with accurately citing caselaw, as it does hallucinate.

I’d be really disappointed by this if you were my child’s English teacher. I take it you wouldn’t allow your pupils to rely on Chat GPT to write their essays so why is it ok for you? Talk about setting a good standard..

There's a theory that reasoning evolved from our need to communicate with the people around us (social theory of reasoning). So in a sense it's not just about getting the answer "right" or having the "best" most convincing argument. The act of thinking through our reasons for something, tailoring it to our audience and expressing it is the whole point. Sometimes having to explain something can even force you to admit you were wrong. But most of the time it's just about a really old social contract between people to show their workings. Asking Chat GPT to generate an argument for something bypasses that whole process so it's compleyely normal to feel put out by it. If reasoning is a social function then asking a computer to do that is disengagement. You are extremely unlikely to convince people with an argument that they know to be generated by chat GPT (if they don't know that's different and more sinister).

Would all the people who think it’s fine to use it be happy if they, for example, contacted their midwife with concerns about their pregnancy and the midwife just asked a chat bot? If we are removing all the need for an expert opinion, be that health care or knowing how to make a soufflé, then why bother having experts?

I think that is a bit different to asking on FB type groups, which you have to really use as "bus stop chatter" rather than getting an accurate response. I don't object to professionals using it to craft a reply in general. I would expect whatever prompts they are using not to be for the technical side of their job, but more for using it so the answer is easy to understand by someone who is not a fellow professional.

I love it and ask it high and low questions almost daily.

The only time it got it (spectacularly) wrong was when I asked it the day after why Iran’s nuclear capability had just been destroyed by the US, and it didn’t seem to know yet that the bombing had happened!