More like this:
“Danger! Danger!”
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Good points. I think there’s some exaggeration in how bad the problem was with how ChatGPT was being used to engage the discussion here, or to give better expression to a concept that was challenging.
I think it was in the thread about BioLogos interviewing ChatGPT for the podcast, that I quoted a statement ChatGPT made about the impossibility of forming an infinite series through successive addition. Intuitively I’ve known it’s an impossibility for nearly 20 years and have debated atheists and skeptics about this, often struggling to find the right words, and ChatGPT said it in a way that was pure perfection. So it’s a mixed bag of results. Sometimes it’s great and sometimes it needs help.
They did what?! 
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Um, what? I asked ChatGPT “Is it possible to form an infinite series through successive addition?” and its answer was “Yes, it is possible to form an infinite series through successive addition.”
Which seems to be a good example of the problem with using ChatGPT!
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Knowing ChatGPT it said more than that. Early on I had conflicting results, and I had to explain why the series never goes from being finite to being infinite.
Later when the ChatGPT was being interviewed by BioLogos, I asked the question again and got a flawless result. Let me see if I can find it.
Found it:
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It definitely needs to be used with circumspection! It can provide some references quickly and nicely list and summarize several at time, so there’s that.
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Yes ChatGPT’s ability to pull a quote from a library of information based on a vague concept is like using Google for the first time and realizing it’s capability.
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I also cannot imagine what librarian would not appreciate the ability to conceptually search the text of an entire library. ChatGPT’s faults and obvious lapses in judgement will continue to be corrected into the foreseeable future
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One thing to remember about it and current events is that it does not have access to recent stuff. I think it stopped back in 2020 or maybe 2019 or something. I don’t remember.
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Yes, it went into an explanation of how it works.
Okay, that’s not actually the same thing that I asked. There’s a difference between constructing a mathematical infinite series and making an infinite number of additions in the real world.
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Only a human could mess that up 
In many ways, ChatGPT seems to be designed with the Turing test in mind. But we already have plenty of humans; we do not particularly need human-like computers. Doing tasks well that humans can’t do would be useful. Imitating a human well is what makes Chat GPT function so much as CheatGPT. Although it can do some things well, error checking is not one of them.
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I wonder if we become fascinated by this program and more inclined to view its output as profound to the degree we harbor a scientistic POV, in other words the view that the world is mechanistic and that truth is best arrived at by computation.
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I’m of the mind that ChatGPT is a tool. And like any new tool, the skill is in knowing when to use it and when not to. I probably use CHatGPT a dozen times a day for everything from language practice, TTRPG content creation, learning, a fast ‘Google’, work tasks, copy editing, etc. I resonate with its language style, and as a person who learns through discussion I find it super helpful. Yet, as in the old saying about everything looking like a nail when all you have is a hammer, problems arise when it is viewed as the tool to end all tools.
There is nothing wrong with using ChatGPT to research topics, and allow that content to inform posts. We all do that I am sure with books and the internet, which are just as fallible as current generative AIs. However, one wouldn’t respond to a post by copying/pasting a paragraph from a book or Wikipedia, with little to no context or caveat. Which is the problem we are addressing here.
That said, despite some obvious concerns, I am overall incredibly thankful for the work of OpenAI in providing this amazing tool and am excited about what the future holds.
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Exactly. You also don’t just throw them out because you don’t know how to use them.
That’s not what I see being addressed in the new directive.
And I don’t think it’s as big of a problem as it’s made out to be. Context is king. I don’t recall that many posts which contained a ChatGPT quote minus commentary. There may have been a couple thrown out there by myself without commentary but these should not have been addressed to a forum user in particular.
Additionally, even when quoting from Wikipedia, one has references for the source of information. People can follow up and examine the quoted pages (or articles, or database or whatever) and the sources used to create that page. ChatGPT does not (automatically) provide a list of references, and does not always give the same answer, which indicates it probably doesn’t always use the same sources.
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