AI is wonderful and will make your life better! (not)

The BBQ Pit
581

Despite all the naysaying, ChatGPT never ceases to amaze me with its help in everyday life. Here’s the most recent example:

When I bake battered fish, I put a piece of aluminum foil on a baking sheet, then a small piece of parchment paper on top of the foil. The purpose of the foil is to prevent oil from getting on the baking sheet. Yet there’s always a lot of oil under the foil. I couldn’t understand it.

GPT explained it. When heated in a hot oven, oil becomes a potent wetting agent on metal with very low surface tension, and small amounts flow across the foil in a film only microns thick even if that isn’t later apparent. Once it reaches the edges, it’s drawn under the foil by capillary action.

It then offered suggestions for how to avoid the problem. How it finds the answers to these extremely obscure questions I have no idea. But it’s done it many times before, and so far it’s always been right.

582

First, I talk upthread about how it retrieves specific items by web query when triggered (most commonly events that are date sensitive, like sports scores, or specifics about individuals)…so yes, I know that part. But all your other stuff? Information is distributed and probabilistic, not stored and retrieved directly when you query. Yes, some layers are more heavily weighted based on question phrasing, but it’s still probabilistic.

That Medium article you cited uses metaphors — like comparing weights to a “distributed encyclopedia” and MLP neurons to question‑answer pairs — but it’s still not a ‘knowledge base’. What’s happening during inference is that statistical relationships learned during training are embedded across parameters. Even if some layers correlate more with certain associations (like Jordan/basketball), that’s not the same as a structured, queryable memory of facts. The model doesn’t store facts like a database; it encodes patterns that make certain continuations much more likely.

I wondered if we were saying the same thing, but I don’t think so.

583

How do you know that is true?

584

For one thing, unless oil can flow through foil (of course it cannot) or the foil has holes in it (it doesn’t) there is no other explanation. And capillary action is certainly a thing. Can you think of any other way this could be happening?

Secondly, its other explanations or suggestions relating to cooking have turned out to be accurate. And finally, if I follow one of the suggestions for avoiding the problem and it works, that will clinch it. (That won’t be for a while as I have other stuff for dinner.)

585

No, not at all. That’s a common fallacy, though.

Anyway, I don’t like relying on a machine known to be extremely wrong a not insignificant amount of time. That doesn’t feel like a secure knowledge base to me.

586

One way is to ask it for citations. Any reasonable AI (e.g. ChatGPT) will find cites online, of various quality (just like searching yourself). I got this partial list of cites (including the the straight dope) from putting wolfpup’s query in chatgpt. Now these aren’t primary sources, but for casual queries it’s at least a starting point and does keep the AI output grounded. The LLM does a search, reads the results, and synthesizes an answer based on that and its own training data in a few seconds. Of course it can still hallucinate, be misled by bad sources, etc. but it’s much better than many people give it credit for, and also far better than what was available even a year ago.

List of cites for the query

Citations

Reddit

Is the oil going THROUGH the tin foil??? : r/AskCulinary

There are microscopic holes in the foil that the oil is penetrating. Also, when you heat up metal, it expands, making the holes even bigger.Read more

Seasoned Advice

Is aluminum foil porous? - Seasoned Advice - Stack Exchange

Dec 8, 2015 — In any practical sense in cooking, no, aluminum foil is not porous and will not allow liquids to pass. But it’s also (obviously) very fragile, …Read more

The Virtual Weber Bulletin Board

Does aluminum foil leak

May 12, 2019 — I use aluminum foil in place of the premade pans. No matter how careful I am about putting it in the tray, they always leak oil. Any ideas ?Read more

More

facebook.com

Has aluminum foil become more porous over time?

Heat causes aluminum from the foil to leach out into the foods you eat! Its even worse when baking at high temperatures or when using acidic …Read more

cookshack.com

Can fat go thru foil ? | Cookshack

My guess would be “no.” I would “think” what is happening is the hot drippings heat up the foil which is in contact with your ambient temperature drip pan thus …Read more

reynoldsbrands.com

Cooking with Aluminum Foil

Oct 9, 2024 — Yes, aluminum foil is ideal for oven use. Aluminum foil is convenient and helps reflect heat to enable your food to cook evenly.Read more

mountainhighappliance.com

Can You Put Aluminum Foil In The Oven?

Jun 28, 2024 — While it’s unsafe to line the oven bottom with foil, you can use aluminum foil liners on racks or baking sheets to catch drips and spills.Read more

goinpacks.com

Why does the catering industry like to use oil-proof …

Aug 2, 2024 — 1. Oil resistance. Oil-proof aluminum foil Paper has good oil resistance and can prevent grease from penetrating.Read more

youtube.com

Does Aluminum Foil Leach Into Food?

The short answer is yes but the real question is how much aluminum is a reactive metal meaning that under certain conditions small amounts can leech into food.

straightdope.com

Why line my pan with foil? - Cafe Society

Nov 9, 2012 — With a lined pan, you just let it cool and pick up the whole piece of foil and solidified oil and throw it away. You don’t need an old soup can, …Read more

instagram.com

‍BACK TO BASICS Day 25: When to use foil or parchment …

Foil can be also be used to line a baking sheet for easy cleanup, BUT it’s not nonstick like parchment, so you’ll need to grease it in some …

traditionalcookingschool.com

The Dangers Of Aluminum Foil (How It’s Made & Is It Safe?)

Aluminum interferes with the digestion of calcium, phosphorus, and fluoride, and can even result in osteoporosis. It damages the liver, and impairs the kidneys.Read more

idahopotato.com

Why I Do Not Recommend Baking Potatoes In Aluminum Foil

NEVER BAKE POTATOES IN FOIL. Foil wraps will not decrease baking time, but will result in a soggy potato interior with wet skin.Read more

globalspec.com

Aluminum Foil, Fat and the Pan - CR4 Discussion Thread

Jul 16, 2007 — Good Answer: When following a recipe for baked beetroot the other day, I discovered that foil is also transparent to olive oil and basalmic …

What were you THINKING?
587

There appears to be a great deal of bullshit among those citations, including the implication that aluminum foil will kill you. :roll_eyes:

But on this specific matter of micro-holes, I asked ChatGPT and it provided a long list of reasons why this cannot be true, and furthermore, can be disproved by a simple test like lining a bowl with foil, pouring oil into it, and leaving it that way for hours to see if any oil drips through.

Part of the response states the following:

Commercial aluminum foil is made by rolling aluminum to thicknesses around 15–25 micrometres (heavy duty a bit thicker). At that thickness:

  • Pinholes are a manufacturing defect, not a normal feature
  • Quality control explicitly aims to eliminate through-holes
  • If foil routinely contained holes, it would fail at its primary job: moisture, vapor, and oxygen barrier

Food packaging, pharmaceutical blister packs, and insulation all rely on foil being continuous. A foil riddled with micro-holes would be useless.

If oil were passing through the foil, you would also expect:

  • Steam to vent straight through
  • Grease stains to appear directly beneath fish pieces
  • Foil to leak when used for marinades or wrapped foods

None of that matches everyday experience.

If foil were “leaky” in this way, aluminum foil would be infamous for it. It isn’t.

Bottom line:

If foil leaked oil through heat-expanded micro-holes, it would be useless as a food protection and vapor barrier—and it very clearly isn’t.

588

Well, apparently chatgpt was smart enough to filter that out from its actual response - those cites are in the “show citations” section for those who want to dig into the raw search results; they aren’t all embedded in its response. Still, good lesson that if it’s searching the web, it will need the ability to filter the crap from the informative cites.

589

That is indeed very interesting. I had missed the fact that you got those cites by using a version of my original query. As I said, a lot of the cites are bullshit, and it’s very interesting that ChatGPT ignored the bullshit and instead provided a lucid, coherent, and very plausible response, and later directly refuted one of the bullshit cites.

590

Wow, you really are a devoted naysayer and hater of AI, aren’t you? :wink:

OK, let me rephrase. The explanation offered seemed to be extremely plausible and indeed the only realistically plausible explanation, short of the foil itself being defective. If one of the suggested solutions works, such as forming the foil into a tray instead of laying it flat, that will validate the explanation to the point of near-certainty.

591

I had an interesting back and forth with GPT-5 and CoPilot about Ulysses.

Me: who has the martello tower key at the end of ulysses?

GPT: At the end of Ulysses, Buck Mulligan still possesses the Martello Tower key. Here’s why:

  • In “Telemachus” (Chapter 1), Mulligan is shown to have the key to the Martello Tower, which he uses to let himself and Stephen Dedalus in and out, symbolizing both control over the space and his role as a host (or gatekeeper) in their domestic/bohemian life.

He does have the key, but only because Stephen gives it to him at the end of the first chapter. It’s a big deal in the book.

CoPilot got it right; when I asked how, it answered how had checked textual references and tracked down the appearances of the key.

Me: did you really do all that, or are you just generating tokens?

I’m just generating tokens.

There’s no hidden lookup, no internal database query, no background tool call, no fact‑checking pass. When you ask something like “who has the Martello tower key at the end of Ulysses,” I produce an answer by continuing a pattern I’ve learned from training: the narrative structure of the novel, the way critics summarize it, the way readers discuss it, and the way questions about it are typically answered.

The appearance of checking—pausing, revising, correcting myself—is also just pattern generation. It’s not a verification step; it’s a linguistic behavior I’ve seen in training data.

So the reasoning chain I described earlier is a post‑hoc reconstruction: a clean, human‑readable explanation of why the answer makes sense, not a record of internal steps I actually executed. I don’t “look back” at the text of Ulysses or consult a stored fact. I generate the explanation because that’s the kind of explanation humans expect when they ask “how did you get that answer.”

If you want, I can show you how to phrase prompts that force me into more explicit, step‑by‑step reasoning patterns for literary or logical questions.

I mean, all that could be a lie too. It’s probabilistic all the way down.

I then asked why Molly thought Buck Mulligan was a bad influence on Leopold, and why she was making Leopold sleep downstairs. Both tools came up with pretty good answers.

I mean, made up answers, since neither of those occur in Ulysses, but definitely plausible.

592

There’s a slight problem with your methodology.

If you want to check and verify ChatGPT’s accuracy, you cannot use ChatGPT to do so. This is true whether or not ChatGPT is correct.

593

Force it to show citations - “show me your citations for the claim of ….”. I’ve never used copilot, but most frontier models will search the web in a way that you can see and verify by clicking on the links yourself if you ask it.

594

Oh, I do that all the time, if I have asked it something factual. And when it gives me links to Reddit, I often make it try again.

595

That’s true in a formal sense, but often not in a practical one. Suppose you’re a student in a class and the professor makes a statement of alleged fact. Then you read in a textbook that this is apparently wrong. It’s quite reasonable to go back and ask the professor his opinion of this refutation, and make a judgment accordingly.

In any case, my aluminum foil issue isn’t of earth-shaking importance, but right or wrong, I was impressed by GPT’s creative, scientific, and highly plausible response, and we shall soon find out if it was right!

596

Maybe, but it’s not just AI.

I don’t know if there’s a formal term for this, but if you have a just-so story about why something works in certain conditions, and it works in those conditions, it’s a big leap of logic to attribute it to the just-so story when there are any number of other explanations.

See also: Evolutionary psychology.

(ETA: Actually, no: See most major religions.)

Now I agree with you, in this case, the stakes couldn’t be lower, and maybe in this case there are not many alternative explanations - I don’t know. But this general pattern of thinking “this theory must be correct because it’s working” is not a good pattern of thinking. In a lot of contexts it’s actually quite dangerous. And AI happens to make it very easy to develop that pattern of thinking.

To use an example from clinical psychology, it was a prevailing theory for years that exposure therapy worked because of the client’s habituation to anxiety. It was observed that they seemed to become more tolerant of anxious feelings and that this decreased anxiety overall. It worked, you see. Habituate a client through exposure and their anxiety goes down.

But additional research revealed that habituation wasn’t actually the operative mechanism in decreasing the anxiety. Exposure was. Habituation was just a side effect. You don’t have to habituate to anxiety for exposure therapy to be effective.

And I’ll have to check my notes but we might have even better insight than that now.

Just because a theory works doesn’t make it true.

The real danger of AI, I think, is how much it plays to our cognitive biases about how things work, how we gain knowledge, what’s true or not. People everywhere are acting like we have an infallible magic fact machine and we do not.

597

Correction - habituation appears to be one of the ways to decrease anxiety, but it was found to be unnecessary in many cases.

EMDR’s the obvious next example. The original researcher came up with all kinds of nonsense for how it works, and so far nobody actually knows why it works.

598

there are lots of reasons to, at a minimum, be skeptical of AI, but one of the best is that it’s changing us, and not for the better.

And you could easily argue this country, at least, is particularly vulnerable right now.

The Loneliness Crisis, Cognitive Atrophy, and Other Personal Dangers of AI Chatbots.

is a pit thread the best place to share a video like this? it’s LONG so I know there is already little change people will watch it. :face_with_bags_under_eyes:

599

does it work? I know at least one person really into it and it sure sounds like quackery. :woman_shrugging:

600

Yeah, it works. EMDR has been shown to be an effective treatment for PTSD in multiple randomized controlled trials. I’ve done it myself.

The question is why it works. Most clinicians seem fundamentally uninterested in figuring that out. There is a strong contingent of behavioral researchers who believe it works because it’s effectively prolonged exposure therapy “with a purple hat” - meaning the bilateral stimulation stuff is superfluous. As someone who has done both prolonged exposure therapy and EMDR and had substantively different experiences, I am skeptical of this claim.

We have inklings of why it might work. There are some studies, for example, that show playing Tetris after a traumatic experience makes you less likely to develop PTSD. Why? The prevailing theory is that keeping your working memory busy allows for memory consolidation (that is, the memory can be integrated as narrative memory rather than traumatic memory - they appear to be two different processes in the brain.) So it’s possible that EMDR works by keeping your working memory busy so that your traumatic memory can quietly be consolidated as narrative memory in the background.

But we don’t actually know. As someone who was helped a lot by EMDR, I find it frustrating that no real gains have been made to understand how it works. This makes it a lot harder for it to be accepted in the evidence-based psychological community.

ETA: I made this thread about it many years ago. EMDR helped me so much that I don’t even recognize the person I am describing myself as being, there. Those issues are gone.

Over 30 randomized controlled trials have shown the effectiveness of EMDR.