Comment by msteffen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by msteffen | Hacker News Reader

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For a long time I held a sentiment similar to the parent comment, and then my brother sat me down, took out his phone, put chatGPT into conversation mode, and chatted with it for about five minutes. That was the second time I was truly amazed by chatGPT (after my first conversation, where I got it to tell me a fair bit about how Postgres works). Its ability to hold a natural, context-aware conversation has gotten really amazing.

I somehow agree with the op, that I don’t think I’m much closer to hiring chatGPT for a real job in 2025 than I was in 2022, but also you that there has been meaningful progress. And in particular, products that are transformative for disabled people are usually big improvements to the status quo for abled people too (oxo good grips being the classic example—transformative for people with arthritis, and generally just better for everybody else)

I use it instead of Google searching now but even I double and triple check the hell out of it. It just bullshits the fuck out of semi complex or unique questions.

Like "can a ps2 game use the ps1 hardware" it gave a noncommital, hallucinated answer. Then when asked to list sources it "searched the Internet" where all the links were from searches like "reddit ps2" etc.

ChatGPT and its kin is already being hired massively as first-line customer support. Voice synthesis and recognition is really good now, too, so it's both online chat bots and phone support bots.

Does it satisfy customer support requests at a much higher rate than previous generations?

Every time I’ve encountered an AI first-line support agent I still find myself looking for the quickest escalation path to a real human just like before.

> after my first conversation, where I got it to tell me a fair bit about how Postgres works

See, I always start with conversations about things I already know about, and they bullshit me enough that I'm wary of Gell-Mann Amnesia when asking them about things I don't know about. They output a lot of things that seem plausible but the way they blend fact and fiction with no regard for the truth keeps me extremely distrusting of them.

That is to say: after your conversation, did you ask for citations and go read the primary sources? Because if you did not, the model likely mislead you about Postgres in subtle ways.

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