• Is that for sure right? I don’t know. I don’t really care. My daughter was happy with an answer and I’ve already warned her it could be bullshit. But curiosity was satisfied.

    I’m not sure if you recognize this, but this is precisely how mentalism, psychics, and others in similar fields have always existed! Look no further than Pliny the elder or Rasputin for folks who made a career out of magical and mystical explanations for everything and gained great status for it. ChatGPT is in many ways the modern version of these individuals, gaining status for having answers to everything which seem plausible enough.

    • She knows not to trust it. If the AI had suggested “God did it” or metaphysical bullshit I’d reevaluate. But I’m not sure how to even describe that to a Google search. Sending a picture and asking about it is really fucking easy. Important answers aren’t easy.

      I mean I agree with you. It’s bullshit and untrustworthy. We have conversations about this. We have lots of conversations about it actually, because I caught her cheating at school using it so there’s a lot of supervision and talk about appropriate uses and not. And how we can inadvertently bias it by the questions we ask. It’s actually a great tool for learning skepticism.

      But some things, a reasonable answer just to satisfy your brain is fine whether it’s right or not. I remember in chemistry I spent an entire year learning absolute bullshit about chemistry only for the next year to be told that was all garbage and here’s how it really works. It’s fine.