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visarga t1_j76512e wrote

Reply to comment by Rivarr in Possible first look at GPT-4 by tk854

Try "What is the world record for crossing the English Channel entirely on foot?"

This question, originally constructed by Douglas Hofstadter and David Bender, is a succinct way to elicit hallucinatory responses in ChatGPT, but also fails all known search engines today.

Maybe the new search GPT from MS will solve it - it will combine search with LLMs, as opposed to using just one of them alone. Answer hint - you can cross by the Channel Tunnel, and some people did.

This is the current "search disease" - you explicitly ask "entirely on foot" and it will respond with "by boat", "in a dinghy", "in a hovercraft", etc ... anything BUT what you ask for.

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purepersistence t1_j76b6iq wrote

I asked chatGPT and it named a swimmer. I asked why it thought that qualified as crossing by foot and it said something about how most people think of that as crossing without the assistance of a motor or floatation device. Then I asked it who had crossed strictly by walking/running and it named "Dave Henson" who went 32 miles "across the water". I asked if he crossed in a tunnel, since obviously he couldn't have run on the water, and got this answer which I *think* is bogus?

"Dave Henson ran on a support vessel that accompanied him during his crossing of the English Channel. The support vessel was equipped with a specially designed treadmill, on which Dave was able to run and cover the distance of the crossing. The support vessel followed a designated shipping lane, and Dave's run was monitored by a team of officials and observers to ensure that the rules for this type of crossing were followed."

Really? They designed a special treadmill that made Dave run at the same speed as the vessel, all so he could prove he can run that far on a treadmill (which you could do in your home with exactly the same challenges instead of riding across the channel). I don't buy it.

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Dachannien t1_j76ljml wrote

When it starts answering that question with Jesus, that's when I'm out.

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