Where I found ChatGPT to be really helpful is when I don't know anything regarding something, and ChatGPT can give me something I could at least verify as true or false.
Compared to before, where I just got stuck on some things, as I couldn't find out what I was actually looking for at all.
That said, there are many people who don't bother to verify anything, as can be observed in comments sections where one can in many cases find people who clearly only read the headline and not the article.
Anyone who uses ChatGPT for a while will learn to take everything with a grain of salt.
(n.b. I am not trying to make any type of political judgement here, I am just using the example in TFA).
If I ask ChatGPT "why is fluoride bad?" it doesn't give me hours of conspiracy theory content^. It doesn't try to sell me water.
Google is not so aligned towards neutral. (Of course, people have been busy sabotaging the Google dataset for over a decade)
^ although I did ask it "what do I do about a ghost that lives in my house" and got this: > Dealing with a ghost can be unsettling. You could consider consulting a paranormal expert or a spiritual advisor for guidance on how to address the presence of a ghost in your house.
* Ignoring it. Not because ghosts aren’t real, but because “some people choose to cohabit and not engage unless it becomes intrusive”.
* Politely ask the ghost to stop disturbing you.
* Purify your home by burning herbs.
* Hire a medium or psychic.
* Get a spiritual leader “from your respective religion” to bless your home.
* Seek help from paranormal investigators.
If I make the exact same question but give it the system prompt “You are James Randi, the world-famous skeptic”, it gives a reasonable answer to help identify the true cause of whatever is making you think there is a ghost.
Which just goes to show how much of a bullshit generator this is, as you can get it to align with whatever preconceived notions you—or, more importantly, the people who own the tool—have.
Then it suggested, amongst other things, ghost expelling rituals, seeking professional psychological help, and moving out of the house.
Using the James Randi prompt, the answer is comical. It says “that would be quite a twist” since he had spent his life disproving supernatural claims.
Context matters - if you begin with saying that you're 6 years old, it will not be willing to admit that Santa isn't real.
This, to me, seems to be an amusing reversal of trends. Before the internet there was the "mainstream media". NBC, CBS, ABC run by the big conglomerates such as GE. Which would mold public consensus in the US. Now there is a desire to go back to that. Let LLM do the thinking and the managing of biases and just tell me what to think.
The unfiltered internet is too much. It's overwhelming. It's the raw sewage of the Facebook feed. We need someone to coddle us. And that champion, today, is OpenAI.
Studying political polarization in the US, the end of the Cold War, globalization, the end of the fairness doctrine, the evolution of major media ownership over time, social media algorithms, echo chambers and confirmation bias is left as a starting exercise for the reader.