Was it something I said? ChatGPT decides it doesn't want to help with pronunciation for audiobooks
A few days ago, ChatGPT seemed happy to help me look up some pronunciations; a few days later, it doesn’t want to help me out anymore.
Once I had a well formed query, ChatGPT had been very helpful.
I was so happy with the result, that I posted about it here. A few days later all of that seemed to change…
To be clear, I did begin with the exact prompt that I had used in the other article. But, it wasn’t until this query that I started to realize there was something else going on here.
Sure, I understand the stock response, but pronunciation data would not have changed since 2021. So I pressed onward.
This is sort of the crux of the argument about AI, isn’t it? If we cannot guarantee that the answers are correct, are they even useful? In a case like this, I would say, yes, very useful. because ChatGPT is able to search through web pages quicker than I am and might find a resource that I had missed.
Yes, you are seeing me try to reason with an AI. I am doing it in hopes of understanding its logic a bit better.
Okay, that is a bit more useful, but I still wanted to know more.
The first paragraph is nonsense since the pronunciation data available online did not change since my initial query and as the AI had pointed out has been a static set of data since 2021.
The second paragraph is basically the AI telling me to Google It for Myself. Which is fair enough really. I can google it myself. I wonder if they will keep the other feature available behind the paywall and just remove it from the free version?
Later, I decided to try a different tact…
I had narrated Cyrus’ book, Habeas Data. And I had found a blog post at the time where Cyrus explains how he says his own name and his reasoning behind it. So, I knew this was incorrect.
The AI just looked up the commonly accepted way to say both names and reported those as if they were correct. Maybe the AI needs to sound less authoritative when it does things like this and say:
I think Journalist and author Cyrus Farivar would most likely pronouce his name ...After all, if a person were making an educated guess, you would hope that they might signal that to you in how they chose to respond.
Please note that the AI says that it will consider this information for the future. But, that flies in the face of what it said earlier about not having any data newer than 2021.
I did follow up by sending feedback saying that the AI should respond to assertions that it is incorrect by actively asking for a more authoritative source from the user.
If you are noodling around with ChatGPT, while you are there, aski it how to pronounce Cyrus Farivar’s name. I’d like to know if it is using the new source that I gave it as data for everyone or just me.
☕ Cup of Coffee
A ridiculous amount of caffeine was consumed while researching.
Add some fuel if you would like to help keep me going!
