ChatGPT

[Joe Shlabotnik]

What the hell was that?

"Intelligence"

The programmers need to teach the bots fart jokes.

[MrCrowesGarden]

What the hell was that?

"Intelligence"

The programmers need to teach the bots fart jokes.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Keep trying!

[mikechamp]

What language is this thing trying to use?

[MrCrowesGarden]

What language is this thing trying to use?

It doesn’t look at language— letters are basically just symbols, the same as a star or a spiral. But it of course doesn’t get it right a fair bit

[Joe Shlabotnik]

So, again, they aren't really teaching the software anything other than 'do a search of what is asked, then randomly riff on that.' The bot isn't trying to communicate or influence or gauge the questioner and tailor the response to them. That sh!t is intelligence. This is still regurgitation and repackaging.

And then for some reason we think its ok to let programmed machines operate on their own with no guardrails or oversight. Machines which will (not may - will) contain bugs and rely on hardware that will (not may - will) wear out, malfunction, and break. It's insane. Complete hubris. Ultimately just stupid.

For @CardsofSTL :

[sighyoung]

One clear issue, based on the generated images, is the limited nature of the data sets being fed these computers, which will generate biased results.

With a couple of exceptions, the art work alludes to ideas about European peasantry and folk humor, to cartoons from the late nineteenth century (the top one looks like a colorized Thomas Nast cartoon) or earlier European art from the 16th through the 18th centuries during the age of trade, exploration, and colonization.

A bushy-haired or curly-haired man with a mustache appears again and again, as do people wearing suspenders--even in conjunction with other clothes (such as the suit and tie in the top image). The presence of balloons, or ships near a harbor, or European towns or ruins, is really fascinating.

To me, this reads like a set of ideas about nationalities and class, combined with certain art conventions of the West, blended together and spat out over and over and over again.

[MrCrowesGarden]

One clear issue, based on the generated images, is the limited nature of the data sets being fed these computers, which will generate biased results.

With a couple of exceptions, the art work alludes to ideas about European peasantry and folk humor, to cartoons from the late nineteenth century (the top one looks like a colorized Thomas Nast cartoon) or earlier European art from the 16th through the 18th centuries during the age of trade, exploration, and colonization.

A bushy-haired or curly-haired man with a mustache appears again and again, as do people wearing suspenders--even in conjunction with other clothes (such as the suit and tie in the top image). The presence of balloons, or ships near a harbor, or European towns or ruins, is really fascinating.

To me, this reads like a set of ideas about nationalities and class, combined with certain art conventions of the West, blended together and spat out over and over and over again.

I'd also add that this was just one AI model (Leonardo AI in this case.) I don't know what I would've gotten if I tried to use another one like Bing, which has a content warning about "fart" in almost every context.

I only use AI for [expletive] because that's all it should be used for.

[sighyoung]

I'd also add that this was just one AI model (Leonardo AI in this case.) I don't know what I would've gotten if I tried to use another one like Bing, which has a content warning about "fart" in almost every context.

I only use AI for [expletive] because that's all it should be used for.

I certainly understand.

[sighyoung]

I do think this is the semester in which I'm seeing students turn to ChatGPT or other sites to help them generate papers.

There was a small number of assignments turned in in which plots and characters were completely incorrect. Quotes from poems that were not from the actual poems. That sort of thing.

In addition, I noticed that students didn't correct their writing from the first to the second exam. For instance, if they couldn't provide a thesis statement in the first exam, they rarely did so in the second exam. Topic sentences often did not state the main idea of the paragraph, but would begin with something like "Philip Roth is an important mid-century American writer. Born in . . . ," and the point of the paragraph and its relationship to the argument of the essay would be buried in the paragraph.

Finally, certain students' "arguments" really only amounted to a gigantic typed quote from the literary work, with little additional analysis. In the past, I would have assumed that the student just needed to learn to elaborate, but now I'm increasingly convinced that some students are making no attempt to practice shaping arguments.