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Comment by fancybouncy | Hacker News Reader

Look at this other prompt: https://www.learngpt.com/prompts/write-the-first-page-of-a-c...

this is absolutely terrifying. the future is getting bleaker and bleaker.

Why is this terrifying? The prompt gave it the scenario and every detail; ChatGPT did exactly what it was told. If anything, this is less creative than the leaf example.

> ChatGPT did exactly what it was told

Actually, I'd suggest it didn't. The prompt implies (but without explicitly stating) that she is the passenger (maybe even one of several) in the helicopter. You wouldn't say "in which only she survives" if she was alone. But the response has her piloting it, with no mention of others on board. I think this illustrates how ChatGPT doesn't really understand the text it is manipulating.

A careful human that spends a good amount thinking of everything that is implied and how it should be put together is unlikely to make that mistake. But I'd argue the vast majority of people (if you sample all Americans for example, and that's a well developed nation) will do equally or worse with that prompt.

No one that ever dreamed of an AGI would have been satisfied with it being of only middling intelligence.

I'm not projecting my AGI dreams on ChatGPT. I'm being insanely impressed by what it does and continuing to see massive progress in that direction is thrilling, worrisome, interesting and so on. Nitpicking that it made a mistake in such a subtle assumption and handwaving away its understanding of things is disingenuous.

Yes, it does some seriously impressive things. (Some of the time.)

But to refer to it as "understanding" anything is to make a rather large leap of faith, IMO. (Or it's a devaluing of the word "understand".)

To be fair, I also didn't notice until the third time I read it. Call me inattentive maybe, but I at least understand the text. I just missed a single word

I employ a copywriter who can knock out 300 words on a range of subjects, to a very high standard, based on a similarly short prompt. I don't think she needs to worry just yet although I would suggest she doesn't think about upping her rates any time soon.

I've tried playing text adventure games with ChatGPT and it leans on certain tropes very heavily, especially if you don't give it a lot of "meat" to work with. It fills out scenes really well but if you don't give it strong direction and let it "drive" you get the text equivalent of unseasoned blended potato.

ChatGPT's response is good because this prompt has a lot of detail. You'd still need to hand hold it through the rest of this story if you want something interesting.

Bleak? This makes me extremely excited for the future.

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