this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 10 months ago (6 children)

I use ChatGPT just for programming and it gives wrong answers half of the time.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (2 children)

i'm studying mechanical engineering and there's a guy in our class who's obsessed with chatgpt. he's always trying to solve all of the tasks using chatgpt and he's always the first to share the solution in zoom. so far it's never been correct but he just sticks with it...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I am a mechanical engineer. I was able to get special permission from my IT department to use LLMs as part of my workflow as a genie pig for the department. It is completely useless.

One the most valuable skill an engineer can have is being able to communicate technical information effectively to different audiences. GPT is on overly polite meat grinder, spitting out half chewed technical slop.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

AI will have a better sense of something like mechanical engineering when it’s inhabited a body for a while.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

If I'm recalling right, I asked Chatgpt re banked turn with friction. Didn't give the answer I was looking for.

I asked Chatgpt re the best big phones of 2022. 1 of the phones it cited was released in 2021.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

Yeah I also do and it is indeed frequently incorrect. It is good when you have like no idea about what you're doing. It can help you get on track and then you can research by yourself.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Not picking fights. Just curious.

Is this an improvement or a decline in your overall code programming success?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

I am a hobbyist (and not very good) programmer, and while ChatGPT (free version) often gives me wrong answers, it still gives me some insight on how some stuff could be done (intentionally or not) or how something works and is actually somewhat helpful in learning stuff, but I guess this could be double-edged sword even in that regard.

It is also pretty good at detecting simple code errors, from what I have seen.

Overall more positive than negative, but I wouldn't recommend to use it blindly.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Huge improvement in work flow.

Don’t get it to write your code for you, it’s not gonna work 3/10 times. Instead use it to review your code, help remove any code smells for refactoring.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

I don't use chatGPT, but work with colleagues who do. They're productivity visibly drops and half the time I gotta fix their shitty code.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I use chatGPT for any topic I'm curious about, and like half the time when i double check the answers it turns out they're wrong.

For example i asked for a list of phones with screens that don't use PWM, and when i looked up the specs of the phones it recommended it turned out they all had PWM, even though in the chatGPT answer it explicitly stated that each of these phones don't use PWM. Why does it straight up lie?!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

It's not lying. It has no concept of context or truth. Auto complete on steroids.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

The other half though is sweet times.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You should give phind a try

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

phind

phind

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

People on ELI5 ask questions that can be answered with a single google search. Yet they do not do the google search. What makes yoi think they will do the bard or chatgpt?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Because if the second worst option is asking ELI5 something basic, then the worst thing is asking Al the same question and then getting the wrong answer. So they choose Al

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I don't get why people trust their answers so much. They lie. Confidently. Constantly.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I usually ask the GPT, then look up the topic myself based on terms and keywords that were mentioned

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

No! You’re meant to blindly trust every source of information you read, AI or not.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I don't get why people completely disregard their usefulness because of that. Just don't trust anything they say until you verify it. It's still useful for exploration or to get enough of a grasp of something that you can figure it out on your own.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

Interestingly, as ChatGPT might be trained on these ELI5 questions and as a result they are asked more infrequently, it might get worse over time or out of date on these types of questions by its own doing. I especially wonder how bad this influence will get on subjects that you'd normally search stackoverflow for.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

During the early newspaper era, they would write the editor with basic questions like they were google.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Yeah I read a 30 year old newspaper a while back and it was like super high latency internet. Message board, posts, replies to posts, personals etc. None of that stuff makes it into newspapers anymore...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

It is. I've seen 'Write the Editor' sections often in the magazines I check out from the library from time to time. IIRC: Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, and The New Yorker have one.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Newspapers? Depends who you ask

Jokes aside, I am not talking about the "write the editor" sections we see now. I am saying they'd use it like GOOGLE. You're not going to see someone ask "what's 32,344 divided by 7?" Or "who is the senator of idaho" In the new yorker.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What are some other communities that are less used now? WritingPrompts and PhotoshopBattles come to mind for me

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Oh man. I forgot that PhotoshopBattles existed.

That's a good question. I would guess that it's lessened some. But both are for creative tasks vs explaining a proven topic, item, or thing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

So, no change then?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

All they need is a couple bots that rely on GPT for outputs and it'd be like nothing changed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

ELI5 how to use ChatGPT and Bard