[Genuine Realist]

I've been experimenting with a variety of AI tools. I realize that they can be hallucinatory and invent citations and so forth, and in its current form, I wouldn't use it for anything other than a draft of certain sections. It's not trustworthy yet.

And yet...I just asked it to add seven one- and two-digit numbers. The total was 85, but the AI engine came up with 87.

A calculator won't fail, the Excel spreadsheet I'm dropping it into doesn't fail when adding and even a wrinkly old human like myself can eyeball seven numbers, add them in my head and come up with the correct number. And to be fair, it added thirty similar sequences correctly.

I don't know when or if AI will take over the world, but...not being able to add seven numbers? What can we infer from that?

It was luring you into a false sense of security.

I asked one of the programs - maybe Chat G/pt - if there was a God. I was hoping someone with a sense of humor knew of Frederick Brown's famous 1954 story, Answer,  in which a super-duper-super computer, hooked up to a gigantic array of computing power, is turned on, with all the luminaries in the world watching. The President asks the same question - is there a God? The computer answers, There is now!, and simultaneously a bolt of lightning fries the on-off switch so it can't be turned off. The story is well known, with frequent variations.

In any case, all I got was a namby-pamby discussion of various metaphysical theories. Maybe there are people that wouldn't have found the answer I wanted all that funny.

[Genuine Realist]

I've been experimenting with a variety of AI tools. I realize that they can be hallucinatory and invent citations and so forth, and in its current form, I wouldn't use it for anything other than a draft of certain sections. It's not trustworthy yet.

And yet...I just asked it to add seven one- and two-digit numbers. The total was 85, but the AI engine came up with 87.

A calculator won't fail, the Excel spreadsheet I'm dropping it into doesn't fail when adding and even a wrinkly old human like myself can eyeball seven numbers, add them in my head and come up with the correct number. And to be fair, it added thirty similar sequences correctly.

I don't know when or if AI will take over the world, but...not being able to add seven numbers? What can we infer from that?

It was luring you into a false sense of security.

I asked one of the programs - maybe Chat G/pt - if there was a God. I was hoping someone with a sense of humor knew of Frederick Brown's famous 1954 story, Answer,  in which a super-duper-super computer, hooked up to a gigantic array of computing power, is turned on, with all the luminaries in the world watching. The President asks the same question - is there a God? The computer answers, There is now!, and simultaneously a bolt of lightning fries the on-off switch so it can't be turned off. The story is well known, with frequent variations.

In any case, all I got was a namby-pamby discussion of various metaphysical theories. Maybe there are people that wouldn't have found the answer I wanted all that funny.