{"id":8502,"date":"2024-07-02T21:17:15","date_gmt":"2024-07-02T21:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=8502"},"modified":"2024-07-02T21:17:15","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T21:17:15","slug":"chatgpt-is-bullshit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=8502","title":{"rendered":"ChatGPT is Bullshit."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@ignacio.de.gregorio.noblejas\/chatgpt-is-bullshit-a0b3f26ee217\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/v2\/resize:fit:1400\/0*N4hvMeaCs299zrJM\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Hallucination Lie<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a class=\"af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar ia\" href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@ignacio.de.gregorio.noblejas?source=post_page-----a0b3f26ee217--------------------------------\" rel=\"noopener follow\" data-testid=\"authorName\">Ignacio de Gregorio<\/a> has a nice Medium essay about why <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@ignacio.de.gregorio.noblejas\/chatgpt-is-bullshit-a0b3f26ee217\">ChatGPT is bullshit<\/a>. The essay is essentially a short and accessible version of an academic article by Hicks, M. T., et al. (2024), <a href=\"https:\/\/doi-org.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca\/10.1007\/s10676-024-09775-5\">ChatGPT is bullshit<\/a>. They make the case that people make decisions based on their understanding about what LLMs are doing and that \u201challucination\u201d is the wrong word because ChatGPT is not misperceiving the way a human would. Instead they need to understand that LLMs are designed with no regard for the truth and are therefore bullshitting.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Because these programs cannot themselves be concerned with truth, and because they are designed to produce<br \/>\ntext that looks truth-apt without any actual concern for truth,<br \/>\nit seems appropriate to call their outputs bullshit. (p. 1)<\/p>\n<p>Given this process, it\u2019s not surprising that LLMs have a<br \/>\nproblem with the truth. Their goal is to provide a normal-<br \/>\nseeming response to a prompt, not to convey information<br \/>\nthat is helpful to their interlocutor. (p. 2)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>At the end the authors make the case that if we adopt Dennett&#8217;s\u00a0<em>intentional stance<\/em> then we would do well to attribute to ChatGPT the intentions of a hard bullshitter as that would allow us to better diagnose what it was doing. There is also a discussion of the intentions of the developers. You could say that they made available a tool that bullshitted without care for the truth.<\/p>\n<p>Are we, as a society, at risk of being led by these LLMs and their constant use, to confuse the simulacra &#8220;truthiness&#8221; for true knowledge?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hallucination Lie Ignacio de Gregorio has a nice Medium essay about why ChatGPT is bullshit. The essay is essentially a short and accessible version of an academic article by Hicks, M. T., et al. (2024), ChatGPT is bullshit. They make the case that people make decisions based on their understanding about what LLMs are &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=8502\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">ChatGPT is Bullshit.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,58,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-ethics-of-data-science","category-philosophy-of-computing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8503,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8502\/revisions\/8503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}