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Comment by walthamstow | Hacker News Reader

Seems relatively reasonable, certainly better than hiring Deloitte for more money and worse results. I doubt it's his only source of information.

I'm very surprised this is subject to FOIA. I'll bet he learns to disable memory and uses incognito chats now though.

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Not reasonable unless the proper security/privacy guarantees are in place. Otherwise this risks a massive security vulnerability; what kind of information is being shared with ChatGPT?

Based on the disclosure here, he's not sharing any information. He's doing research, asking questions, a perfectly reasonable use of the tool. Not unlike using Google.

I'm sure if he wasn't already aware, he's been briefed by his SpAd or civil servant (possibly via the security services) not to disclose any sensitive information.

It's a lot like using Google, but it's different in at least one important way: it doesn't reveal where the information comes from. How do you know if ChatGPT is repeating The New York Times, reddit, or 4chan?

The issue I see is that LLMs are not an unbiased source of information. Functionally, he's just asking big tech companies what to do.

It's one thing when a developer asks an LLM for programming advice, and the LLM has been instructed to prioritize answers suggesting React. In my opinion, it's quite another when a politician asks an LLM for policy advice, and the provider has the ability to make similar prioritizations.

> Functionally, he's just asking big tech companies what to do.

All I see him asking for action on is which podcast to appear on. The rest is just run-of-the-mill research.

> LLMs are not an unbiased source of information

Isn't this true of every information source?

Yeah I frequently discuss difficult system design or other engineering problems with AI. I don't copy-paste it as my own thoughts, but use it as a way to brainstorm solutions. It's no different from discussing it with a colleague that has a very different brain from me. The tech secretary's use of AI seems perfectly appropriate.

I've found it very useful with organisational problems too. I had a complex issue to work through recently and tried working with ChatGPT, Claude and Grok 3 to optimise letters to some of the people involved to try to get things solved in the way I felt was fairest for all involved (anonymised, of course, with no memory on ChatGPT). One neat trick was to export the letter from one chat, then to start a fresh one, say that I am <role of recipient> and provide the letter and ask what it thinks -- basically red-teaming it.

The process of doing that clarified my thoughts and arguments so much that I never wound up having to send them -- I'd already made the right points on Slack and in meetings, and a compromise was achieved.

The only really reliable use I discovered for AI so far is rubber-ducking.

As you dig down it's often so hilariously useless it sparks my decaying intelligence to offer up a gem. Less fruitful than talking to a Junior Engineer but more useful than a physical rubber duck.

> I don’t copy-paste it as my own thoughts

Like how engineers claim they are not losing skills because they are using programming tool assistants, I think there is an over-confidence thing at play here, where the user of an AI assistant doesn’t want to admit to themselves that they are also being shaped by it.

You are still being subtly influenced by something, that’s the whole issue at play here. OpenAI has incredible power in influencing the subconscious of so many people, and I think thats the thing to question here. I am not entirely against it, but we need to be honest with ourselves with how malleable our minds are and influenced we are by what we consume.

Do you lose skills when discussing things with colleagues? What if you find the answer in a book? Sure if you're just having someone else do your work or using an equation without understanding it you'll lose skills, but nothing suggests that AI is essentially worse than either of those. The government official asking for ideas about how they might improve ai adoption in the UK is a perfect example of a good usage. They are actively engaging with the AI, not having it write their policy.

Concerns about bias are bikeshedding. I am much more concerned about the systemic bias of race than I am about OpenAI trying to psyop people(I'm not concerned about race).

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