ChatGPT has a style over substance trick that seems to dupe people into thinking it’s smart, researchers found::Developers often prefer ChatGPT’s responses about code to those submitted by humans, despite the bot frequently being wrong, researchers found.

  • joe@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A caveat: This user analysis involved just 12 programmers being asked to assess if they prefer the responses of ChatGPT or those written by humans on Stack Overflow to 2,000 randomly sampled questions.

    Nothing to see here.

      • joe@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This is the inevitable result of the decision to fund the internet at large via ads. And there would be (has been) tremendous friction from users when it comes to switching from ad-based to subscription, so we might just be stuck with it.

  • neptune@dmv.social
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    1 year ago

    When you underpay a bunch of gig workers to rate the outputs? Obviously it’s going to write in a manner that best BS’s a layperson.

    Would be too expensive to hire experts in every field to train the AI to actually do good work. Imagine paying software engineers 100k plus benefits to vote on its code outputs, or getting Miss Manners to comment on its etiquette suggestions.

  • 1984@lemmy.today
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    1 year ago

    This was the first thing I’ve noticed on day one. The way it “speaks” is designed to sound like a polite authority in the field.

  • sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net
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    1 year ago

    Anyone who has actually needed a correct answer to a question realized this a long time ago.

    The problem is that most people don’t bother checking the answers.

    • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      If you need a correct answer, you’re doing it wrong!

      I’m joking of course, but there’s a seed of truth: I’ve found ChatGPT’s wrong or incomplete answers to be incredibly helpful as a starting point. Sometimes it will suggest a Python module I didn’t even know about that does half my work for me. Or sometimes it has a lot of nonsense but the one line I actually need is correct (or close enough for me to understand).

      Nobody should be copying code off Stack Overflow without understanding it, either.

    • sumofchemicals@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This hasn’t been my experience. Yes, chatgpt gets stuff wrong, and fairly regularly. But I can ask it my question directly, and can include sample code, and I get an answer immediately. Anyone going on stack overflow has to either google around and sift through answers for relevance, or has to post the question and wait for someone to respond.

      With either chatgpt or stack you have to check the answer to make sure it works - that’s how coding goes. But one I know if it works or not pretty much immediately with fairly low investment of time and effort. And if it doesn’t, I just rephrase the question, or literally say “that doesn’t seem to work, now I’m getting this error: $error”

  • BellaDonna@mujico.org
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    1 year ago

    It’s the same way that people are convinced I’m way smarter than I actually am, it’s the way I construct sentences and respond, the words I choose, not to much the substance and verity of.

  • daellat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Certainly it’s gotten worse as we’ve all seen the news probably. When gpt4 came to the API it was impressive at times. A caveat always remained: don’t blindly trust it, but that goes for stack overflow replies too.

    Ohh cool, a downvote and smug reply. Go back to reddit or something.

    Lol https://mastodon.social/@rodhilton/110894818243613681

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s like crypto, or really any other con job.

    It makes idiots feel smart.

    Make a mark feel like they’re smart, and they’ll become attached to the idea and defend it to their death. Because the alternative is they aren’t really smart and fell for a scam.

    When smart people try to explain that to the idiots, it just makes them defend the scam even harder.

    Try to tell people chatgpt isn’t great, and they just ramble on about some nonsensical stuff they don’t even understand themselves and then claim anyone that disagrees just isn’t smart enough to get it.

    It’s a great business plan if you have zero morals, which is why the method never really goes away, just moves to another product.

      • CherenkovBlue@iusearchlinux.fyi
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        1 year ago

        I find it to be an excellent tool to help me write. Staring at a blank page is one of the hardest hurdles to overcome. By asking questions to chatGPT, I start organizing my thoughts about what I want to write, and it gives me instant words on the page to start manipulating. I am a subject matter expert on these topics and therefore screen what it gives me for correctness. It’s surprisingly good, but it has hallucinated some things. But on the balance I find it very helpful.

    • sumofchemicals@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I have seen someone type “tell me how make a million dollar business” into chatgpt. Of course that’s not going to work. But LLMs have immediate obvious value that crypto does not, and I think making the comparison reveals a lack of experience with those useful applications. I’m using chatgpt nearly every day as a tool to help with coding. It’s not a replacement for a person, but it is like giving a person a forklift.