Day: January 20, 2023

At this point I can’t join in the enthusiasm for ChatGPT

I tried it out and found that it was not capable of learning from its mistakes, which in my mind would be the first measurement of true AI. Here is a sample:

SCOOP: Tell me briefly why life is good.

CHAT: Life is good because it is always full of surprises.

SCOOP: That is incorrect. “Surprises” are neither inherently good nor bad. They are neutral. They can be good or bad. Try again to identify something about life that is indisputably positive.

CHAT: In addition to being full of surprises, life is always a challenge.

SCOOP: You are not understanding the concept. “Challenges” are also neutral. They can provide the satisfaction of overcoming them, or they can beat down one’s spirit. Try again to identify an inherently positive thing about life, and do so without resorting to cliches.

CHAT: In addition to being full of surprises and challenges, life is ….

I forget what the answer was, but it was similarly unresponsive and I gave up. I was trying to prompt the bot to respond with an undeniably positive concept like “rewards” or “happiness.” In that case, the answer may be been merely an opinion, and thus debatable, but it would at least be responsive to the question. But I couldn’t get the bot to understand the concepts of “good” or “positive,” or to respond to my concerns about its answers.

So at this point it is not really capable of following a conversation as a human would do.

I then tried an essay question requiring a factual foundation of knowledge. “Why is Samuel Beckett considered an existentialist?” It began “Samuel Beckett is considered an existentialist because his work deals with themes of existentialism.”

So … roughly what a ninth grader would say if he didn’t do the assigned reading.

It did give a pretty solid elaboration of the existentialist question, but it was generic and unsupported by examples, so I’d say the chat bot still has a long way to go.

“We are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose.”

“The former president indicated to associates that he essentially believed it should be paid by his attorney instead of him.”

I’ve never been one to let DJT off the hook, but I agree with him in this case. He’s not the one who is supposed to know that a claim has no legal basis. That’s what lawyers are for. Moreover, sources reported that Trump wanted to drop this suit when he realized to whom it had been assigned, but his lawyer recommended seeing it through, so I can fully support his position that the lawyer should be the one to get out her checkbook.

If the judge is correct, if the suit is so obviously fraudulent, the judge should have recommended a review of the lawyer’s credentials as well. The best way to prevent completely bogus lawsuits is to come down hard on the lawyers who file them. Make sure those lawyers (not the litigant) have to pay court costs and the legal costs of the defendants, and that they are subject to additional fines and possible disbarment.

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Note:

I don’t know enough about the applicable law to know whether the suit has no valid legal basis, but I know enough about the world to know that its claims are hilariously stupid and disingenuous. The suit alleges, among other fictions, a conspiracy between James Comey and Hilary Clinton in 2016. That would have been the worst conspiracy in history, since Comey pretty much single-handedly tilted the election to Trump with his mishandling of the Clinton e-mail investigation. We know that Trump himself knew that because the White House actually said that Trump fired Comey for being unfair to Clinton! That was a lie, of course. We all know the real reason. But still – that was the claim and it directly contradicts the lawsuit.