I have many conversations with people about Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Copilot. The idea that “it makes convincing sentences, but it doesn’t know what it’s talking about” is a difficult concept to convey or wrap your head around. Because the sentences are so convincing.
Any good examples on how to explain this in simple terms?
Edit:some good answers already! I find especially that the emotional barrier is difficult to break. If an AI says something malicious, our brain immediatly jumps to “it has intent”. How can we explain this away?
It’s a really well-trained parrot. It responds to what you say, and then it responds to what it hears itself say.
But despite knowing which sounds go together based on which sounds it heard, it doesn’t actually speak English.
You could maybe just share a meme like this one.
Some folks in the comments there share actual LLM results, a few of which are sensible but plenty that aren’t far off from the joke.
