I wonder what a current-generation self-driving car would do when it sees those signs. I tried showing that comic image to ChatGPT and asking it what I should do in this situation. (image interpretation only available to plus users). I confused it greatly. 
Ok, this is kinda weird. I asked Bing this:
And it gave this response:
Reading the first paragraph, I was impressed–the signs indeed create create an impossible situation. But reading through the examples… they don’t correspond to the signs. And yet, they’re kinda close. Like the contradiction between the speed limit and minimum speed. Which came from the missing alt-text. The numbers are wrong, but the idea is exactly the same. And there is a Do Not Enter sign, but there’s no other “Entrance Only” sign.
So weird. Almost like it interpreted a different comic with the same idea. Maybe Xkcd is presenting a different image to Bing?
Ok, I guess this makes sense:
So it must have run across ExplainXKCD, and then rephrased the results into something new. What a cheat! I’ll have to try a different method.
On the other hand, it did actually come up with legitimately contradictory situations. Well, except the first one, which doesn’t make much sense.
Hard to say. To feed an image to ChatGPT you have to upload it, so it never saw the alt-text and I didn’t tell it. Twice, it misinterpreted the middle sign to be a car with the red slash through it; I had to manually push at it to recognize it as a No U-turn sign. Then at that point, it still was confused; it kept forgetting that the first sign meant “do not continue on this road” even though it had successfully said that’s what it meant at first. So, I made the post I did about ChatGPT getting confused.
After I made my post, I pushed on with the conversation. Eventually I did get a coherent response out of it but I had to lead it by the nose to get there:
I just went back and semi-randomly picked this one to try ChatGPT-4’s new image interpretation feature, and it got it almost exactly right:
User
Tell me what’s in this image and your interpretation of the message?
ChatGPT
The image is a three-panel comic strip.
- In the first panel, there’s a caption that reads, “It’s weird to pry open a rock and see an animal that no one has laid eyes on for 400 million years.” Below the caption, there’s an illustrated scene of ancient marine life, including trilobites, swimming around.
- The second panel shows a stick figure holding a rock that appears to have been split open, revealing the fossilized remains of a trilobite.
- In the third panel, the stick figure is shown “booping” or touching the trilobite with their finger, and another voice from off-panel exclaims, “Hey! Don’t boop the trilobites!”
Interpretation: The comic humorously contrasts the awe and reverence we might feel when discovering a creature from millions of years ago with the casual, playful instinct to “boop” or touch it. It juxtaposes the ancient and profound with the contemporary and lighthearted. The message might be about human curiosity and our sometimes irreverent interactions with ancient artifacts or the natural world.
I worry now that it’s just doing a web search for the image and then paraphrasing the results!
I used my extreme MS Paint skills to make a different version of the XKCD comic, and asked it:
Ok, so it didn’t get the contradiction. Though it doesn’t seem to like that the car is driving down the middle of the road .
I gave it a bit of a hint:
I don’t like the poor grammar. But aside from that, it did correctly get the contradiction.
I’m pretty sure ChatGPT is not doing that. I’ve thrown screenshots I’ve made that I know aren’t indexed on the web and it’s clearly trying on its own to interpret the pictures. It frequently misunderstands important elements. Also, you have to choose which extra feature is active when you start a session, either web browsing OR image interpretation. (OR using 3rd party plugins like Wolfram OR Dall-E 3 image generation OR advanced data analysis (dunno why they call it that; it’s just a built-in python code interpreter))
Nothing quite so blatant, but I did once see an actual photograph of a signpost with
The Intermediate Value Theorem would like a word, here.
And with the intervening discussion, now I wonder if any current AI could see the issue with that one.
That panel needs a cop car parked by the side of the road. Otherwise…
Sesame Street covered this!
(start at 0:25)
There are the Houses of Parliament!
I feel I may be missing the joke on this one. The roundabout is only drivable if you get off at the first exit. If you enter the spiral, you end up driving into oncoming traffic. But I think I’m being too literal and there’s a punchline I’m not seeing.
You’re right. Any cars that go into the spiral wind up at the center, and there’s no way to escape that without going the wrong way. “The only way to win the game is not to play it” - stay on the outside perimeter, even though there are (dashed) lane lines that discourage that. And no, I don’t see a real punchline either.
All the lane lines are dashed, so that might mean that technically one could cross any of them at need - but I’m retired, not practicing as any kind of engineer, and I sure ain’t the judge you could find yourself in front of, if you ever did.
You could, to ruin the joke completely, just move right just after the exit, before the next entrance, because there can be nobody there, and ignore the centre entirely.
I’d be really surprised if anyone has ever gotten a ticket for changing lanes in a roundabout. In fact, there’s some times you have to change lanes. Mainly if you need to make a U-turn and exit the same way you came in. As far as I know, that’s perfectly legal, but it requires at least one lane change to do it in a multi-lane roundabout.
Any ideas on what a ‘Hermeneutic oath’ could be?
Hermeneutic Oath: First, there is more than one way to interpret it
Hemispheric Oath: First, cut your ball in half
Heliocentric Oath: First, the Sun is at the center of the Solar System
Hemorrhagic Oath: First, keep your blood inside
Hieroglyphic Oath: First, draw some little pictures
Hypocritic Oath: First, never lie to anyone unless you want to.