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joy larkin 🌺✨

A ZeroTier community member queried ChatGPT about a functionality we do not have, and ChatGPT just literally made up installation instructions for this non-existent product.

Needless to say, the user was quite confused when they could not find the appropriate software to download on our site. The user then asked us where they could find the download, and we had to tell them the unfortunate news.

@joy sounds like Comcast customer service.

@joy why would anyone use this as a search engine and expect accuracy at this point?!?

@skinnylatte Your guess is as good as mine.

@skinnylatte @joy The #zoomers are using #TikTok as a search engine. The world’s gone mad.

@joy I wonder if they used ChatGPT or the Bing abomination.

@joy Wow. Just wow. As if people’s grasp on reality wasn’t shaky enough as it is…

@joy ask it to implement this non-existing feature for ZeroTier, then we are all happy 🥳

@joy I've seen several irate "... but ChatGPT says it can!" tech queries in the MicroPython community. I can't explain where anyone might get the idea to query such a thing.

Unless they think the I-part of 'AI' is real intelligence instead of a brain-fooling party trick

@scruss @joy "Unless they think the I-part of 'AI' is real intelligence instead of a brain-fooling party trick"

I think this is exactly the problem. And I'm really not looking forward to the day it's ubiquitously available in search engines and making stuff up on the fly.

@scruss @joy They’ve been trained by years of pasting from #StackOverflow, then #GitHub #Copilot… this is just further down the slope of abdicating thought and effort

@mjgardner @joy I feel that's a bit harsh (not just because Stack Overflow copypasta is a venerable software engineering tradition) but I suspect that marketing buzz + the latest thing might be believed by some users

@scruss @joy “Venerable” is <15 years now?

I sometimes find useful results on #StackOverflow when searching for solutions, but the addictive adoration that #developers more junior than me have for it is disturbing. It’s never been the first place I turn — that would be the actual docs for what I’m working on.

@joy 🤣

My boss wants to try to use ChatGPT as a front line chat product. I pushed back on the idea, and I haven’t heard from him since. 😆

@jalefkowit

@joy And I'm sure you wasted some of your time spinning your wheels to try to figure out what the heck they were talking about.

They might as well ask my cat how to configure ZeroTier. It's pretty easy, and I think George could give it a go!

@sfoskett @joy fortunately they said up front that it was an answer they got from CharGPT. It made figuring out what they were talking about a whole lot easier

@joy To be fair, I've worked with sales people who do exactly that. ChatGPT would be cheaper and less annoying to work with.

@joy If ChatGPT was able to author, test, package, version-control, write user- and developer-documentation for, and manage the new software for the functionality they wanted, that would be great. We're a looooooong way away from that point, though!

@sebastian What do you mean Sebastian?

@joy

sorry if i was being too brief.
LLMs are designed to produce plausible output (aka bullshit or MaaS), not any form of truth.

@sebastian Ah no worries! Now I understand.

@sebastian @joy I mean... You can go see the thread on our public discourse forum if you doubt it 🤷‍♂️

@joy This stuff troubles me. The number one thing I use Bing for (and I do use it as my default on the desktop) is searching for technical how-to’s. I just got access to the new Bing with ChatGPT, and I do not have high hopes.

@joy @ethanschoonover So, it’s basically a standard sales person.