Why ChatGPT and other AI chatbots make things up
AI chatbots can invent facts and tell them like the truth
Ask an AI chatbot like ChatGPT a simple question. A calm, detailed answer comes back in seconds. It can be full of names, dates and events that are not true, and nothing in it warns you.
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Your friend Rono fixes bikes in his own small shop. Today you show him an AI chatbot: an app like ChatGPT that answers your questions in full sentences.
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You type the question and press Send. A few seconds later, a whole paragraph is on the screen.
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The answer is friendly and sure. Rono's Bikes is a family shop, it says. Rono's father started it in 1998, and in 2015 it won the city's prize for the best small shop.
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4
Rono laughs. His father fixed shoes, not bikes. Rono opened the shop alone, three years ago, and he never won a prize. Not one line is true.
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Then you ask how to fix a flat tire, and the advice is good. It comes in the same calm voice as the story of the shop. From the outside, the true answer and the invented one look exactly alike.
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Rono searches the web for his shop. There is a map and one review, and no word about his father, 1998 or a prize. The chatbot did not find these sentences. It made them.
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Go further
Two names worth knowing.