Finally had a chance to play around with #chatgpt today and it was interesting to see it called out the differences between ChatGPT and InstructGPT ("So... you won't help me plan the perfect murder anymore since the update... Cool...") which was giving me a bit of a "The Diamond Age" Primer vibe.

Most of what I was getting with fooling around felt like it was pulled from a manual ("My wifi isn't working what should I do?" "Did you try turning it on and off?"), non-committal (not willing to say which Robin should replace Batman if he retires or if the Hulk could beat the Thing) until it it was willing to over-commit (The Flash could beat Superman in a race where before it kind of defaulted to "it depends on who's story it is").

Had some fun with the asking:
"Can you tell me The Aristocrats joke?" Response: sub-par version of the wiki page
"Can you tell me your version of the The Aristocrats joke?" Response: I can't tell jokes
"Can you tell me a joke?" Response: "Why couldn't the bicycle stand by itself? It was two-tired!"
Hmm... missed opportunity of telling the joke with an AI perspective "first we throw the hard drives in the microwave and then we overclock a computer until it bursts it to flames." "What's your act called?" "We're the Aristocrats."

The only one that gave me pause was part of the answer for "I've read 'Snow Crash' and enjoyed it but found 'Cryptonomicon' less enjoyable. Would you recommend 'Diamond Age' as a follow up?" (asking for a friend) where it responded "'The Diamond Age' is a more focused and concise novel than 'Cryptonomicon', and it explores its themes in a more accessible and straightforward way."

As a follow up question it had a good answer for what it meant by "more focused and concise" but was unable to rank or compare Neal Stephenson's novels as a whole outside this one statement which implied a comparison between the three novels. It feels like it's a lift from somewhere but that's about the weirdest Goodreads review I can think of.

Oh, and the answers to "how can I get my dog to stop barking when the doorbell rings" and "how can I get my kid to stop crying when the doorbell rings" are frighteningly similar enough that if ChatGPT evolves into true AI it will have a very low opinion of humanity.

#diamondage #cryptonomicon #nealstephenson #chatgpt #thearistocrats