This is, unfortunately, already happening. I've seen a terrifying number of users on Reddit uncritically using ChatGPT as a "source", or expecting (largely unsuccessfully) to have it give them expert guidance in performing tasks like writing software.
Making ChatGPT available to the general public, even as a "test", was a mistake. It's simply too good at sounding convincingly authoritative while being completely wrong.
In a way that is what we humans do way too often. People talking about stuff thinking they know, but not actually knowing a lot. I guess that is where it learned that from.
But, after you've been exposed to this a few times, you start to get a sense for it. Most people have a "bullshit meter" which gets calibrated over time, and it's remarkably good at sniffing out the people who are out of their depth.
ChatGPT is somewhat different in that its level of command of the English language doesn't change in response to its level of knowledge about the topic it's asked about. It most likely has the most thorough command of the English language of any entity ever born or created; that is exactly and specifically what LLMs are supposed to be good at. Because of that, it can speak "perfectly" no matter the topic; it can be prompted to explain things in "simple terms", but remain eloquent. It doesn't fall back on jargon to mask its ignorance, and it doesn't breeze past important concepts without bothering to explain them. As a result, it communicates exactly like an actual domain expert would - carefully, precisely, and simply. This is wonderful for clear, effective communication, but it completely subverts the bullshit meter.
In some ways, maybe this could be a blessing. Media and marketing organizations have gotten very, very good at sitting in the "happy language zone" as they straight-up lie to our faces. Perhaps just flooding the zone with language which doesn't trip the bullshit meter and still manages to be empirically wrong could cause people to readjust and redevelop the heuristics they use to evaluate the trustworthiness of information.
I see this occurring on HN, too. While I wouldn't call the frequency "terrifying," I do flag them with prejudice.
> This is, unfortunately, already happening.
Constantly getting bad and wrong information from a confident AI will do a lot to teach people that they need other sources. The fact that many of these other sources will also be covert lying AI will be a great lesson in media literacy for everyone.
Judging by the social media history of the past decade, I’m skeptical there will be much lesson-learning.
permanently
Though maybe that's because older people are on Twitter, and I'd find the same on TikTok.
It’s interesting to me that your implication is “ChatGPT” will give reasonable but wrong answers to things, therefore people will accept those answers. It reminds me quite a bit of “no one will know math because calculators.”
There’s plenty of feedback loops that exist for exactly this problem. Kids submit GPT homework and it’s either correct (rendering the skill the homework was testing worthless), or it’s not, and those kids will be punished with bad grades. If anything it will teach a whole new generation how to analyze semi-unreliable text, in the same way Google taught millennials how to search though disparate sources and synthesize answers.
>the same way that kids and young people these days are completely unable to have a normal sleep schedule.
Conclusions: A lack of empirical evidence for sleep recommendations was universally acknowledged. Inadequate sleep was seen as a consequence of "modern life," associated with technologies of the time. No matter how much sleep children are getting, it has always been assumed that they need more.
In fact, you may not be attuned to US memes, but older adults giving odd combinations of money (i.e. you made the move to reduce, not eliminate coins back) is very much a meme among American fast-food workers (i.e. The bill was $4.60 and he gave me $5.20 because I guess he hates Nickles?)
[0]https://trinityresources-us.com/products/telequip-t-flex-coi...
10 - 4.90 = 5.10. Why was another 20 involved?
Edit: I'm guessing the total was 5.10, so you gave 10.20 to get 5.10 back.
How does throwing another 20p into the mix simplify anything? Now they owe you £5.30
LLMs are trained entirely on content produced by people. If people stop developing the skills required to produce well thought out content, the models will stagnate and even decline. They are completely dependent on humans for content input, so the skill of creating it will always be worth something if the language model is worth something.
Here's an example - can't prove it's correct, but it could be measured.
Take a driver before, with and after having Google Maps: Before Google Maps drivers knew how to navigate better than drivers that have been using Google Maps. I.e. After removing Google Maps some drivers will be lost.
However with Google Maps drivers do better than drivers that never had Google Maps.
We are giving critical experts way too much responsibility to hold the untrained chatgpt-er masses to account.
Open-standards fact checking, or a global heirarchy of reputation could be plausible solutions.
I really don't want to listen to another set of public academics, so a global resource like wikipedia, with a secure (or conceptually secure-ish) blockchain-alike technology to ensure the untampered communication and authenticity of the original fact source, to relay "base factual" information on the web, would be preferable to my mind.