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Alan
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

December 27th, 2022, 2:59 am

That last one is, of course, incorrect. I try to get ChatGPT to correct it and it goes pretty wacko! 
 
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Alan
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

December 27th, 2022, 3:15 am

I try again. ChatGPT again makes a bad mistake but seems to accept very explicit advice about correcting it. However, it
is troubling that it wrote an equation 640 = 400 and declared that to be "valid"!

Me Give a hard math word problem and its solution. Then, show explicitly that the solution works.

ChatGPT: Sure! Here is a math word problem:

A rectangular field is three times as long as it is wide. The perimeter of the field is 400 meters. What are the dimensions of the field?

Solution:

Let the width of the field be w meters. Then, the length of the field is 3w meters. The perimeter of the field is the sum of all four sides, so we can write the equation:

2w + 2(3w) = 400

Combining like terms, we get:

5w = 400

Dividing both sides by 5, we find that the width of the field is w = 80 meters. The length of the field is 3w = 3 * 80 = 240 meters.

To check that this solution works, we can substitute these values back into the original equation to verify that it holds true:

2(80) + 2(240) = 2(80 + 240) = 400

Thus, the solution is indeed valid. The dimensions of the field are 80 meters by 240 meters.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Me: That's wrong. 80 + 240 = 320 and 2*320 = 640, which is not 400. Try again.

ChatGPT: I apologize for the error in my previous solution. Here is the correct solution:

Let the width of the field be w meters. Then, the length of the field is 3w meters. The perimeter of the field is the sum of all four sides, so we can write the equation:

2w + 2(3w) = 400

Combining like terms, we get:

5w = 400

Dividing both sides by 5, we find that the width of the field is w = 80 meters. The length of the field is 3w = 3 * 80 = 240 meters.

To check that this solution works, we can substitute these values back into the original equation to verify that it holds true:

2(80) + 2(240) = 160 + 480 = 640 = 400

Thus, the solution is indeed valid. The dimensions of the field are 80 meters by 240 meters.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Me: No, 640 cannot equal 400. Your error is the line 5w = 400. It should read 8w = 400. Do you see the error?

ChatGPT: I apologize for the error in my previous solution. You are correct that the equation should be 8w = 400, not 5w = 400. Here is the correct solution:

Let the width of the field be w meters. Then, the length of the field is 3w meters. The perimeter of the field is the sum of all four sides, so we can write the equation:

2w + 2(3w) = 400

Combining like terms, we get:

8w = 400

Dividing both sides by 8, we find that the width of the field is w = 50 meters. The length of the field is 3w = 3 * 50 = 150 meters.

To check that this solution works, we can substitute these values back into the original equation to verify that it holds true:

2(50) + 2(150) = 100 + 300 = 400

Thus, the solution is indeed valid. The dimensions of the field are 50 meters by 150 meters.
 
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Marsden
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

December 30th, 2022, 12:32 am

Wouldn't it be sad if innumeracy among AI was as commonplace as among humans?
 
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bearish
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

December 30th, 2022, 1:57 am

We briefly thought that the problem with ChatGPT (and its brethren) was students using it to cheat on their homework assignments. The more likely scenario is that it will be teachers cheating, and then getting the answer key wrong!
 
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Alan
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

January 6th, 2023, 4:14 am

As Gene Hackman said to Will Smith in Enemy of the State:
"You're either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid."
 
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Paul
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

January 6th, 2023, 6:48 am

It's just that there are different types of smart. I remember a discussion between Jordan Peterson (I'm winding up bearish!) and Stephen Fry. The former is what I would call smart but the latter just has a good memory. Of course, Peterson is about to be "re-educated," something like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest I imagine, so he won't be smart for much longer.
 
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Alan
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

January 6th, 2023, 3:53 pm

Yes, I should clarify that the 'You're' in my post was referring to ChatGPT.  

Re JP, it's pathetic that Canada actually has a so-called 'Charter of Rights and Freedoms' (part of their Constitution), that says, among other things:

"Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: ...  freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression ..."

Apparently, they didn't really mean it.

California is the same as Canada now with regard to the suppression of free expression by doctors
 
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bearish
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

January 6th, 2023, 11:46 pm

I don’t have prior first hand experience with your source, but the apparent need to include a reference to Hunter Biden in a covid story probably tells me all I need to know.
 
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Alan
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

January 7th, 2023, 11:04 pm

The California law at issue (now in force) attempts to punish spreading "covid misinformation", which it tries to define as "false information" that contradicts the "scientific consensus". So, the article used the example of the Hunter Biden laptop as one recent example of a consensus itself being false. I don't see a big problem with that, although arguably a scientific consensus is being conflated with a spook consensus or something. 

That aside, I am sympathetic to push-back against vaccine misinformation. 

The problem is, vaccines aside also, there were many egregious covid lockdown policies simply driven by giving health care bureaucrats free reign to be overly cautious. There was little science and a lot of guesswork. If this law was in place in Oct 2020, I suspect every physician signer in California of the Great Barrington Declaration would have been hauled up to be threatened by a loss of license by the Medical Board of California.  That's what's wrong with it. 
 
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Alan
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

January 13th, 2023, 2:08 pm

 
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Cuchulainn
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

January 16th, 2023, 8:54 pm

One possible application (and I see why Microsoft is interested) would be to take out the drudgery of writing documentation. We took an example of tell us about SOLID software design. It churned out an 18 page document.

I wonder how and wher go the data from. I suspect Wiki and the millions of trivial code examples floating around the web. However, it might be useful, but can it be trusted?

And all those Oxford commas... ChatGPT was written in comma separated syntax?

Exhibit 1
SOLID is an acronym that stands for five design principles for object-oriented programming. They were first introduced by Robert C. Martin in the early 2000s and are intended to make software designs more understandable, flexible, and maintainable. The SOLID principles are:

Exhibit 2

In software engineering, SOLID is a mnemonic acronym for five design principles intended to make object-oriented designs more understandable, flexible, and maintainable. The principles are a subset of many principles promoted by American software engineer and instructor Robert C. Martin,[1][2][3] first introduced in his 2000 paper Design Principles and Design Patterns discussing software rot.[2][4]: 2–3 

 
The SOLID ideas are
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SOLID.pdf
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Last edited by Cuchulainn on January 16th, 2023, 9:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.
 
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Cuchulainn
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

January 16th, 2023, 9:02 pm

Wouldn't it be sad if innumeracy among AI was as commonplace as among humans?
Are you only discovering that now? 5% of people on LI think Marvin Minsky invented gradient descent. The other 45% think it was Newton.
 
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Marsden
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

January 17th, 2023, 12:37 am

Are you only discovering that now? 5% of people on LI think Marvin Minsky invented gradient descent. The other 45% think it was Newton.
I have to confess that I was not familiar with the term ... I might have guessed the Wright Brothers invented it.

That said, having looked it up (and I think it was presented as "Newton-Raphson" when I was introduced to it in comp sci) ... isn't it pretty obvious -- ? To claim someone invented it sort of smacks of naming something obvious after someone, to make it seem like it's new and revolutionary in some way. Like the Laffer Curve.

And of course I've always been disappointed that the Marsden Function didn't catch on. M(5,3)=8, for example. And all the interesting properties of it, such as M(x,y)=M(y,x). And M(x,M(y,z))=M(M(x,y),z). And of course M(x,0)=x.
 
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bearish
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

January 17th, 2023, 3:04 am

Are you only discovering that now? 5% of people on LI think Marvin Minsky invented gradient descent. The other 45% think it was Newton.
I have to confess that I was not familiar with the term ... I might have guessed the Wright Brothers invented it.

That said, having looked it up (and I think it was presented as "Newton-Raphson" when I was introduced to it in comp sci) ... isn't it pretty obvious -- ? To claim someone invented it sort of smacks of naming something obvious after someone, to make it seem like it's new and revolutionary in some way. Like the Laffer Curve.

And of course I've always been disappointed that the Marsden Function didn't catch on. M(5,3)=8, for example. And all the interesting properties of it, such as M(x,y)=M(y,x). And M(x,M(y,z))=M(M(x,y),z). And of course M(x,0)=x.
The thing about the Laffer curve is that it has exactly one point that is undisputably true, which is the left end point. A zero tax rate will produce no revenue. There is a reasonable argument that a 100% tax rate will do the same, but that relies heavily on a behavioral argument. In between, it’s anybody’s guess what will happen, but the view from USC is that reducing the tax rate will always and everywhere increase tax revenue, because that’s pretty convenient.
 
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Cuchulainn
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Re: My Dinner with ChatGPT

February 11th, 2023, 5:57 pm

As the relevant technology now stands, Chomsky sees the use of ChatGPT as “basically high-tech plagiarism” and “a way of avoiding learning.” He likens its rise to that of the smartphone: many students “sit there having a chat with somebody on their iPhone. One way to deal with that is to ban iPhones; another way to do it is to make the class interesting.” That students instinctively employ high technology to avoid learning is “a sign that the educational system is failing.” If it “has no appeal to students, doesn’t interest them, doesn’t challenge them, doesn’t make them want to learn, they’ll find ways out,” just as he himself did when he borrowed a friend’s notes to pass a dull college chemistry class without attending it back in 1945.

Noam Chomsky