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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

Oh no!

Sounds like there are two misconceptions there: the idea that ChatGPT can read URLs (it can't - https://simonwillison.net/2023/Mar/10/chatgpt-internet-acces... ) and the idea that ChatGPT can remember details of conversations past the boundaries of the current chat.

This is something I've noticed too: occasionally I'll find someone who is INCREDIBLY resistant to learning that ChatGPT can't read URLs. It seems to happen mostly with people who have been pasting URLs into it for weeks and trusting what came back - they'd rather continue to believe in a provably false capability than admit that they've wasted a huge amount of time believing made-up bullshit.

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What really tricked them was that our company's website is in its corpus. At least the old version. So when asked about different aspects of our products or company, it would give answers that were close, but not quite correct.

They definitely need to add some guardrails to warn it can’t read URLs like they do when you try to ask anything fun.

What is the point? In a couple of months the plugins will be generally available and then it will be able to.

The point is to not mislead people about what is going on, of course.

Ah, that’s why it messed up my rather simple request to generate a SQL query to get all messages received by a given call sign, based on the table definition at https://wspr.live - it picked plausible, but nonexistent table and column names.

I took “this thing isn’t nearly as smart as everyone’s making it out to be” from that session, but you’re the first person to make it clear that it’s not actually reading the rather simple page I directed it to.

> they'd rather continue to believe in a provably false capability than admit that they've wasted a huge amount of time believing made-up bullshit

This is an incredibly strong human tendency in general. We all do it, including you and I. It's one of the things that it's wise to be constantly on guard about.

Oh man I was totally in the camp of people that thought it could read URL's until reading this comment

> they'd rather continue to believe in a provably false capability

For some people it borderline is a cult now, even here on HN, they'll give it intelligence, personality, character, &c.

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