ChatGPT Tackles xkcd's 'What If'?

Having recently seen a paper on the benefit of chain-of-thought prompting, I wondered how this might differ if you added something like “thinking through this step by step…” to the prompts.

I tried it with the mountain prompt, as follows:

> Thinking through this step by step: What if a huge mountain—Denali, say—had the bottom inch of its base disappear? What would happen from the impact of the mountain falling 1 inch? What about 1 foot? What if the mountain's base were raised to the present height of the summit, and then the whole thing were allowed to drop to the earth?

ChatGPT’s response:

> It's not possible for the bottom inch of the base of a mountain like Denali to suddenly disappear, as the mountain is connected to the Earth's crust and is held in place by the planet's gravity. However, if the entire mountain were somehow lifted up and then allowed to drop, the impact would be catastrophic. The energy released by such an event would be immense, and it would likely cause widespread damage and destruction. It's also worth noting that the Earth's crust is not solid and uniform, so the ground beneath the mountain would likely be deformed by the impact.

I think we’re learning just how sensitive large language models are to prompting.