Does Jupiter have 79, 80 or 95 moons? We were all stumped by what ChatGPT told us during the Straits Times Generative AI Masterclass yesterday.
– The free version of ChatGPT (3.5) told us that Jupiter had 79 moons as of Jan 2022.
– The paid version (ChatGPT 4) told us it had 80 moons.
– Wikipedia said Jupiter had 95 moons, and we asked ChatGPT 4 why.
– ChatGPT 4 then did an Internet search and told us that yes, there are now 95 moons as new moons have been discovered recently.
“Then, how can we trust what ChatGPT says?” asked one workshop participant.
I replied, “That’s why our job as humans is now to check the machine’s output, using our good old human ways of finding and confirming data.”
What a great lesson for all of us! This episode came about as I was teaching the limits of our human datasets and I said, “Hmm, does anyone know how many moons Jupiter has?” I then asked the class to use ChatGPT to find out. I must admit I was stunned by how wrong ChatGPT 4 was but it helped to reinforce why we cannot trust LLMs to get the facts right all the time, even with a paid subscription.
We had a great time yesterday during the ST Masterclass and I thank all the participants for being so engaged and curious! It’s also great to connect with new friends like Pauline Teo, Vasudevan Subramanian, and Christy Chung!
Sign up for the next ST Masterclass on 1st Aug here: https://www.stskills.sg/course/digital/st-ai-masterclass