No, because the answer you gave was wrong. Not just subtly wrong, but blatantly, egregiously, obviously wrong by inspection, to the point of actually contradicting itself. And then you posted a second, ‘corrected’ response that still wrong. All of this after two posters posted the correct answer for you, calculated by using a knowledge of basic mechanics or a formula that could be easily referenced from Wikipedia or any basic physics text. You weren’t. being “diligent” and instead of acknowledging that you shouldn’t rely upon Bard (or really any LLM-driven chatbot) to give you a reliable answer, you doubled down by throwing a fit and whinging about how you should be able to use AI for a math calculation, and if the answer is wrong it’s not your problem because:
Yes, when you are posting a factual, quantitative response, it is expected that you did some minimal amount of checking to verify that the answer at least seems correct, which you clearly did not do because it is intuitively obvious that if you accelerated something at 1 g for 500 seconds it would be going far faster than 500 miles per hour, notwithstanding that the response you posted actually gives two contradictory answers, both of which are wrong:
It’s okay to be wrong or make a mistake; I make mistakes all the time. But this wasn’t an error in calculation, or misinterpreting the problem, or transposing some figures. It was just the result of cribbing from a source you had no reason to believe to be valid, and you weren’t interested in doing even a cursory read of the Bard response before you cut & pasted into the thread. It wasn’t even just a non-contribution; your subsequent posts and unwillingness to acknowledge that the answer was incorrect was a needless diversion from the discussion.
So I’ll repeat the same question I asked before: What value do you think you are bringing by posting a blurb generated by a chatbot that you don’t even have the knowledge to fact-check?
The bit @Stranger_On_A_Train neglected to tell you…I copped to my mistake in the thread cited:
It actually said it was still working on figuring out calculations like this and then took its best shot.
And it seems it did give the correct answer…I just did not read far enough. Seems I am the dumb one…sorry about that, I should be more careful here. - SOURCE
I also noted in the ATMB thread that @Stranger_On_A_Train is someone who also posts on topics without explicit expertise. Glass houses and all that…
A quick check shows you posting in FQ about Hyperloop, textbooks, “lizard brain,” billionaire income tax, GPS satellites, cloverleaves for highways (and nuclear targets), measuring level over long distances, what to do with 70,000 tons of iridium, re-entry of spacecraft using GPS, insurance companies trying to find someone, atoms in your body, life insurance and how long you do CPR.
To repeat what I said in that thread - an LLM saying “I’m still working on figuring out calculations like this” does NOT actually mean the LLM is working on figuring out calculations like that. All it means is that the LLM has learned that that sequence of words strung together in that order has a high likelihood of being a satisfactory answer to the prompt it’s been given. It’s literally just telling you what it thinks (and “thinks” is being generous) you want to hear.
And it seems it did give the correct answer…I just did not read far enough. Seems I am the dumb one…sorry about that, I should be more careful here. - SOURCE
You “noted” it, but you did not provide any actual examples of it. You just posted a list of topics, and the fact that he does post in great detail on a wide range of topics does not imply that he must therefore be ignorant of some of them.
I didn’t follow the relevant thread, but this comment is utterly moronic. You are entitled to you own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts.
In a thread about whether Taylor Swift is a greater genius than Mozart, everyone should offer their opinions and arguments with equal vigor and assertiveness. (Although anyone who denies it is clearly a fool.)
But in a technical thread about (say) mathematics or physics, of course ignorant guesswork is not on an equal footing with contributions from people with technical expertise. That does not imply that people without expertise are are unwelcome to participate. Of course they are - but the appropriate way would surely be to read and ask questions and participate by learning from those who are gracious enough to share their expert knowledge.
You still have not answered the basic question of what value you contribute to a discussion by sticking a question into a text fabricator and copying and pasting the output without having any understanding of the subject or the relevance of what you’re posting.
Your attempts to defend your behavior all basically boil down to “it wasn’t that wrong and it got corrected so what’s the harm.” Which means that, for you, the value of your contribution is that the bot allowed you to participate in a conversation which you were otherwise not qualified to participate in. The value-add, in short, is to relieve your own personal FOMO. There is no value-add for other posters or for the board in general. It’s simply about you.
I used the AI to solve a math problem. Not to write my post. I made a mistake and I admitted to it. For that I am here defending myself. None of this would have happened had I never said what I did.
You are making the SDMB a worse place but at least you can feel righteous about it.
Also, my post was #300-something. The SDMB mods let FQ questions meander once the question is answered (usually in the first 10-20 answers). I was doing nothing unusual or wrong per usual board culture. It’s done all the time. 300 posts in, I am ok in saying nothing I did was wrong. If it were, the mods could chastise me. Which they didn’t (in that case).
Which I admitted to. Admitted in that thread. I made a mistake. I admitted to that mistake. Why do you think I need to the chastised over and over for it?
So by your own account you made a failed attempt to feign expertise with the help of an AI, admitted it and got shit for it.
Admitting it was the right thing to do, but it does not override the wrongness of the thing you were admitting to. If I kick a puppy and then admit to kicking a puppy, I don’t expect people to be primarily focused on praising me for being honest.
I’m certainly guilty of providing FQ answers out near and occasionally beyond my knowledge, much less my expertise. And gotten corrected, although not Pitted, about it.
I will also suggest that the cultural expectations of FQ here in 2023 2024 are much looser than the expectations of FQ née GQ in e.g. 2001. General knowledge and trivia is much more easily self-service available everywhere on the 'net now vs then. The GQ/FQ rules have not really kept up with the sloppier FQ culture we now have. Whether the FQ culture should be consciously pushed back towards the old way or the rules should move towards the new way is a separate question for a separate thread.
I’ll add this to the discussion:
You (any you) may choose to use an FQ as a jumping-off point to satisfy your own curiosity about a topic you’re (mostly? entirely?) clueless about then share your research results with the group. I certainly have, and probably within the last month.
But it’s useful to show your cites and include caveats about how much personal expertise you bring to the issue. The more confidently you express your new-found knowledge, the more duty you have for full disclosure. I suffer from that; my writing style is (IMO) naturally very confident / persuasive, such that I need big bold caveats to avoid fooling people. Caveats I don’t always provide, but certainly should.
I have not yet ever used an AI/chatbot for anything whatsoever, much less generating “knowledge” to share here. But my general bottom line is this:
As others have said, posting chatbot results, even with a citation to the bot, is probably below the threshold of positive utility for FQ, and especially scientific / math FQs. And therefore should not be done at all.
Chatbot results are the opposite of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is all carefully sourced and cited. A Wikipedia article may not be right (although they are usually very good) but they are transparent and easy to check.
Chatbot results are just text. When they include cites, the cites are sometimes made up of whole cloth. The source of the information is opaque and impossible to check. Sometimes they are right despite all that. Other times, they are very wrong, but sound authoritative anyway.
Citing a Wikipedia article can be helpful in a factual discussion. Citing a chatbot answer is more likely to be clutter, and might be actively misleading. I don’t think chatbot “answers” should be allowed until joke answers are allowed, that is, after the question has been answered, or we’ve all given up.
@Whack-a-Mole , the problem wasn’t that you got caught using ai, it’s that you posted a crap answer.
No, your mistake was posting crap. The source of the crap is interesting, as it suggests a practice that can be avoided. But your mistake wasn’t admitting the source, it was posting crap in FQ.