A grown man I work with, he's in his 50s, tells me he asks ChatGPT stuff all the time, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. It is a copycat designed to beat the Turing test. It is not a search engine or Wikipedia, it just gambles it can pass the Turing test after every prompt you give it.

[–] Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 13 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Honestly though, with a bit of verification, chatgpt 4 gives waaaaaay better answers than any search engine. Like, it's how it was back when you'd just ask Google a plain-english question and it'd give you SOMETHING at least.

Again, verify everything it tells you, it's still prone to hallucinations, but it's a damn good first step.

[–] CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Sure. But take it for what it is. It is a language model designed to imitate humans writing. What the future holds, I can't say

[–] Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago

Right, which is why I suggested to verify whatever it spits out, I'm just saying it's not entirely outlandish to ask it quick questions as opposed to your search engine of choice.

[–] SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Like if I ask it for the lyrics of a song it'll give me the lyrics?

[–] Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Well, I tried to test it and it started OK, but then gave me a content violation as it was generating, so that may be one of the ones that don't work as well.

[–] SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net 2 points 9 months ago

Anything copyright related gets blocked like this, I don't remember the other example, but this one was in recent memory

[–] megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 9 months ago

People want functioning web searching back, but rather than address issues in the industry breaking an otherwise functional concept, they want a new fancy technology to make the problem go away.

[–] qGuevon@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

It works well if you know what to use it for. Ever had something you wanted to Google, but couldn't figure out the keywords? Ever saw someone use a specific technique of something, which you could describe, but wouldn't be able to find unless someone on a forum asked the same question? That's were chatgpt shines.

Also for code it's pretty sweet

But yeah, it's not a wiki or hard knowledge retriever, but it might help connect the dots