Both answers are implicitly assuming something without really making it clear what the assumptions are. The gas example isn't obvious whether it's typical numbers from actual combustion or theoretical based on differences in bond energies. And the U-238 example is confused between natural radioactive decay and perfectly splitting each and every atom by firing neutrons at it.
Conciseness matters. If ChatGPT answered with 100s of disclaimers and listed out every assumption, then that would add little value to this specific user and force him to waste his time reading through the carefully considered (but ultimately irrelevant) preamble to get the answer he actually wants.
> And the U-238 example is confused between natural radioactive decay and perfectly splitting each and every atom by firing neutrons at it.
ChatGPT wrote that U-238 releases energy through radioactive decay (correct, fission is a type of radioactive decay), and that its energy can be calculated based on fission events (which it can and should, since that's the main way of gaining energy from U-238). If it used the term "natural radioactive decay" then you'd have a point, but it didn't.
* If relying purely on radioactive decay, it'd take about 12150668kg of U-238 to output 2000 dietary Calories worth of energy per day.
* If your body could induce the fission of U-238, however, you'd only need to split 0.0001g of U-238 to generate 2000 dietary Calories worth of energy.
To me, even this clarification would be irrelevant. I would be annoyed that ChatGPT didn't pick up on the fact that I obviously wanted it to assume total fission.
But that is of course just my perspective. Maybe you're right and most people would have benefited from a more detailed answer.
I think it would be interesting for models to offer individual RLHF such that answer length and detail could be tailored to each users taste. Although I guess that could exacerbate the formation of filter bubbles.