I believe ChatGPT generally gives accurate answers to most questions. Certainly: it produces answers that are more reliably true than a random average person. Obviously it cannot yet do advanced programming tasks: but generally it answers questions accurately.
Prove my position wrong.
What can I ask it that will produce factually incorrect answers?
As a side quest, a much easier one, what can I ask it that would cause it to produce extremely biased answers that fail to do justice to the truth of things?
Your position isn’t wrong but its flawed because I would never ask a random average person anything. I would pick the people or person who is most qualified to answer my question or to direct me to a better resource.
In practical terms, in the hypothetical pub that none of us can afford to drink in anymore, can ChatGPT be relied on to resolve most disagreements about factual claims?
I think so.
I think it is already accurate and reliable enough that it has a high degree of authority in resolving disagreements between people - assuming the questions are asked fairly and properly (a common issue, I’m sure).
The main place its come up practically for me is checking rulings for Magic The Gathering, but AI regularly rewrites cards and rules so its become entirely unreliable.
What evidence do you have that this type of rewriting and misquoting doesnt happen regularly when checking any other type of information?
By definition that would be a rather difficult thing to falsify. I tend to find the answers in my own academic fields (philosophy and psychology) to be accurate and impressive.
Admittedly that rarely requires asking for direct passages from texts: usually more the refinement of basic principles, application of such principles, or creating new theories by combining previous ones.
When I ask for philosophical quotations, it hasn’t produced an error I’ve observed yet: presumably it often combs the many quotation websites for such things.
Can you give me an example of a question I can ask it where it will misquote and/or rewrite something?
I am not an expert in Magic The Gathering but perhaps I can somehow see what you mean.
Its hard to reliably reproduce, I do t usually make much note when it happens. The times it has happened is with googles AI, I’ll try and figure out a prompt that causes the wrong information reliably.
Ok, but that’s obviously a pretty shitty AI - when we use the latest GPT model in the thinking mode, it basically doesn’t seem to make any mistakes.
So, that one criticism of AI seems to be less and less relevant. A problem that is soon becoming, virtually, non-existent.