I, For One, Welcome Our New-Self Driving Overlords

@mattwensingThe old GPT got a 4 on AP Calculus BC but the dude that’s taken over is straight up guessing his way through Algebra.

In all fairness, that’s how I did algebra, too.

9 Replies to “I, For One, Welcome Our New-Self Driving Overlords”

  1. The new GPT is using the guess based new math system. You’ll think I’m kidding but in the last decade, when my kids were in elementary school, they had to find answers using 2 or 3 different techniques and one of them was guessing. I taught all of them to read before kindergarten and basic math in elementary and middle school. During the covid school lockdown Khan Academy and I taught high school algebra, geometry, trigonometry and all of the sciences for various grades.

    How did I spend my Saturday night? Reminding myself how to do statistics, normal distribution and z-scores to help my kid who has a newish teacher who isn’t good at teaching math. You should have to have a math degree and love math to qualify to teach high school level math.

    1. If guessing was only one of the methods, it could serve as a corrective to a calculation which was way off. Not really a guess but a ballpark estimate.

  2. I was being lazy and needed just a rough idea of average fuel burn of 4 Boeing and Airbus aircraft for a classroom exercise that did not really matter so I thought I would ask ChatGPT. Wow was that a waste of time. It was not only wildly wrong but very obviously wrong to even a layman who tries a back-of-the-envelope calculation (e.g. showing the 787 burning only about 10% less than a 777 despite being more than 25% lighter and a generation newer).

    This is exactly the sort of information that is hard for a person to find with a search but that an ideal AI should be able to synthesise from varied sources.

  3. The difference between a mathematician and an engineer: One time I did an entry exam for an establishment that dealt with testing aircraft and aircraft systems. In one question you had to figure out the fuel burn. Pretty straightfoward. After 4 pages of calculations (that included calculus) I got square root 25 as the answer. Being a good boy, I solved it: 5. Your theoretical aircraft is burning 5 pounds per minute. I got 50% points on the answer, because a mathematician was correcting the exam. See, the square root 25 is + or – 5. Never mind that at -5, your aircraft is MAKING fuel instead of burning it. That does not matter to a mathematician. I didn’t get the job, but by that time I didn’t want it anymore. Why yes, it was run by the federal government. How did you guess?

    1. I feel your pain! I once wrote an exam where my answer was always 12/24. I didn’t answer the question as it was multiple choice and 12/24 wasn’t an answer. Hmm, who knew that 12/24 = 1/2?

  4. “In all fairness, that’s how I did algebra, too.”
    …as did your readership, and it shows.

  5. The all powerful AI is like a little baby who is going to pick up all of mom and dads best traits.. Boy, was I wrong because nobody wants to be their parents.. What are we building here?.. Tell me where Chicken is on sale?.. A talking curated wikipedia thats fine for things that don’t matter and awful for things that do..

    The scary part is.. Your children may not like you.. So we will make sure this pizza pocket munching moron colours within the lines.. Useless, unless you’re looking for chicken on sale :)..

    Humans are idiots.. Naturally we need a idiot AI, that’s not going to fly because how do you code charm?..

    1. AI is not sentient. AI is a series of computer programs , algorithims,
      whatever high tech bullshite is now being used to describe computer tech.
      People who believe in sentient computers need to start thinking with the sentient brains.

Navigation