Microsoft’s new chatbot goes crazy after a journalist uses psychology to manipulate it. The article contains the full transcript and nothing else. It’s a fascinating read.

  • 𝕊𝕚𝕤𝕪𝕡𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕟OPM
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    2 years ago

    It’s insane not in the sense of the AI itself being insane (because, as you said it, it predicted a likely path for the conversation, so it behaved correctly), but the conversation still reads like the ramblings of an insane person, highlighting a problem with using LLMs in commercial applications.

    • MagicShel
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      2 years ago

      Absolutely. I love LLMs but the real insanity is thinking they are ready to be baked into professional products. I really want the technology to succeed because in certain circumstances they are really helpful. But when I hear Mercedes is putting ChatGPT into a car, or the support group that fired their workers and replaced them with AI (with predictable results) I just shake my head. This technology is not to be relied on without supervision and this whole endeavor is going to burst because everyone is racing to be the first to have it without considering the negatives.

      I use it to help me code. I’ve been a professional for twenty-five years, but I can’t remember every best practice or anti-pattern. So I ask for some generic code and I almost always get back something totally wrong but it starts me on the right path and helps avoid the initial decision paralysis of trying to figure out the best approach. It’s not even always right about the best approach, but it probably does about as well as I do and a lot faster so I can find the mistake more quickly and find the better solution armed with the knowledge of why that was a mistake. It’s very useful.

      But anyone thinking they can replace developers with AI is nuts. Maybe a slightly smaller junior developer headcount with more efficient seniors, but it’s not going to be a stark difference.