Yesterday I published ChatGPT’s version of my bio. It is highly plausible but full of falsehoods. Today, I reveal what was false and attempt to figure out the source of the lies. In what follows, quoted material is from ChatGPT’s response to “Who is Josh Bernoff?” The numbers count the lies. There are 14 lies…
Associate deans at the Vanderbilt University office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) sent an email to the whole Peabody College community after a man shot eight people at Michigan State University. The deans made the ill-considered choice to use ChatGPT to write the note. But regardless of that choice, such post-shooting sympathy notes are…
An advocacy group called “The Dawn Project” aired an ad challenging the safety of Tesla’s Full Self Driving feature during the Super Bowl. The ad is a good example of dishonest fearmongering. Before I analyze the ad, let me clarify two things. First, this ad appeared, not nationally, but in local markets like Washington, DC…
I recently received this query from a loyal reader: In an era where merit is accorded on the basis of social media ‘likes’ and increasing numbers of TLTR [too longer to read] messages I would like to (read) your comments on how to get the audience to ‘read to the bottom.’ Good question. Is “read…
I’m obsessed with the question of whether machines can ever be funny. I’ve already shared how ChatGPT just “doesn’t get it” about what a joke is. It seems to understand the structure of a joke, but never quite gets what makes jokes funny. (The last of these ChatGPT jokes is so stupid that is a…
When I edit, I help writers get smarter. Will it ever possible to do the same thing with AI text generation programs like ChatGPT? Making writers smarter Writers and publishers generally hire editors to make text better. I can’t do that and only that. For me, it’s boring to just identify what’s wrong and fix…
Trigger warning: this post is full of gruesome stuff. The police have charged Brian Walshe of Cohasset, Massachusetts with murdering his wife Ana. They have physical evidence including blood stained items, towels, rags, a Tyvek suit, Ana’s vaccine card, a hacksaw, and cutting shears, but no body. But the Google searches on his son’s iPad…
According to the Washington Post, European regulators and airlines are now investigating ways to enable 5G mobile phone calls on airplanes. Right now, you can’t do this because mobile phones on planes need to be in “airplane mode” — that is, not connected to mobile antennas. The ostensible reason is that mobile phone frequencies interfere…
Imagine that you had a friend who was a fairly good conversationalist but whose often got facts wrong. What would you think of such a person? Because that is what ChatGPT is. A bullshitter. This, surprisingly, is not a criticism. As it turns out, the AI required to figure out how to write a convincing…