Hacker News Reader

Comment by teraflop | Hacker News Reader

See, for instance, the conversations in this thread with figures like Henry Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Lyndon Johnson: https://twitter.com/ZaneGTCooper/status/1615577714836275200

View on HN

tbf, Reagan insisting that he did the best he could with the AIDs crisis is quite plausible.

That's the other problem with the theory of understanding historical figures by chatting with them: even if the simulation was realistic or we were able to reincarnate the actual historical figures they'd lie, dissemble and make excuses a lot...

The limitations of using pre trained data with a simple prompt. The bot will get inspired by the prompt a little, but most of its text comes from the training which is adjusted to sound as neutral and "generally acceptable human"like as possible.

This means that for most cases the personality disappears.

To add: if the training and fine tuning comes from how the subject actually responded, spoke and reasoned, then that would be quite scarily accurate.

I agree with the original point, but giving an answer that shows yourself in the most favorable light seems like what these bots should be doing. Despite the innaccuracies, I think that's pretty much the angle someone like Reagan would take if confronted now about those events.

If people are using this app to learn about these figures, and by extension history, then prevarication and falsehood amounts to propaganda and historical revisionism. People aren't going to treat these apps like games, but as authoritative sources of truth.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com