this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't unless a website requires that I talk to one as a poor excuse for customer service.

So, less than once a year.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I just type "Speak to a human" until it relents. Usually takes 3-4 times. Kind of the chatbot equivalent of mashing 0 on telephone IVRs. The only question of its that I answer, after it agrees to get a human, is when it asks what I need support with since that gets forwarded to the tech.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

About as often as I have a conversation with my dishwasher: never.

[–] dingus 6 points 5 months ago

Jeez...how do you think your dishwasher feels about that? Monster!!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If by conversation you mean asking for a word by describing it conceptually because I can't remember, every day. If you mean telling it about my day and hobbies, never.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

That is basically the best use of LLMs.

A few of the most useful conversations I’ve had with ChatGPT:

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I had fun with it a dozen times or so when it was new, but I'm not amused anymore. Last time was about a month ago, when someone told me about using chatGPT to seek an answer, and I intentionally found a few prompts that made it spill clear bullshit, to send screenshots making a point that LLMs aren't reliable and asking them factual questions is a bad idea.

[–] friend_of_satan 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

asking them factual questions is a bad idea

This is a crucial point that everybody should make sure their non-techie friends understand. AI is not good at facts. AI is primarily a bullshitter. They are really only useful where facts don't matter, like planning events, finding ways to spend time, creating art, etc..

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

If you're prepared to fact check what it gives you, it can still be a pretty useful tool for breaking down unfamiliar things or for brainstorming. And I'm saying that as someone with a very realistic/concerned view about its limitations.

Used it earlier this week as a jumping off point for troubleshooting a problem I was having with the USMT in Windows 11.

[–] friend_of_satan 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Absolutely. With code (and I suppose it's of other logical truths) it's easier because you can ask it to write a test for the code, though the test may be invalid so you have to check that. With arbitrary facts, I usually ask "is that true?" To have it check itself. Sometimes it just gets into a loop of lies, but other times it actually does tell the truth.

[–] ChefTyler1980 8 points 5 months ago
[–] metaphortune 6 points 5 months ago

I've done it once or twice in the early days to see what was up, never since then.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Maybe 1-3 times a day. I find that the newest version of ChatGPT (4o) typically returns answers that are faster and better quality than a search engine inquiry, especially for inquiries that have a bit more conceptualization required or are more bespoke (i.e give me recipes to use up these 3 ingredients etc) so it has replaced search engines for me in those cases.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Only to try out the next big upgrade. It will never be human or superhuman.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Your lack of faith is disturbing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve created. The ability to compose haiku is insignificant next to the power of a nice hug.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Lol somebody downvoted you. I love a good hug

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

All too easy

[–] Resol 3 points 5 months ago

It's simple: I don't.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Not as much as I did at the beginning, but I mainly chalk that up to learning more about its limitations and getting better at detecting its bullshit. I no longer go to it for designing because it doesn't do it well at the scale i need. Now it's mainly used to refractor already working code, to remember what a kind of feature is called, and to catch random bugs that usually end up being typos that are hard to see visually. Past that, i only use it for code generation a line at a time with copilot, or sometimes a function at a time if the function is super simple but tedious to type, and even then i only accept the suggestion that i was already thinking of typing.

Basically it's become fancy autocomplete, but that's still saved me a tremendous amount of time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

The closest I come to chatting is asking github co-pilot to explain syntax when I'm learning a new language. I just needed to contribute a class library to an existing C# API, hadn't done OOP in 15 years, and had never touched dotNet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Once or twice a week

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I forgot how the conversation went, but one day, a conversation I had with someone about comprehensibility (which was often an issue) compelled me to talk to an AI, a talk which I remember from the fact the AI did now have such issues as the complaining humans had.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Yeah I’ve run into this a bit. People say it “doesn’t understand” things, but when I ask for a definition of “understand” I usually just get downvotes.

[–] OutrageousUmpire 1 points 5 months ago

Multiple times throughout the day. I co-work on personal projects with several different LLMs. Primarily Claude, but also GPT-4o and Llama 70b.

[–] friend_of_satan 1 points 5 months ago

It varies. Sometimes several times a day, sometimes none for a week or two. I'd say about half of those conversations are about software design.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I use Perplexity pretty much every day. It actually gives me the answers I'm looking for, while the search engines just return blog spam and ads.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I had a professor tell our class straight up, use perplexity, just put it in your own own words.

[–] gedaliyah 1 points 5 months ago

Maybe 3-4 times a year. Can't see using it more than that at this point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Once every few months

[–] KestrelAlex 1 points 5 months ago

I've never tried to have what I would call a conversation, but I use it as a tool for both fixing/improving writing and for writing basic scripts in autohotkey, which it's fairly good at.

It's language models are good for removing the emotional work from customer service - either giving bad news in a very detached professional way or being polite and professional when what I want is to call someone a fartknocker.

[–] Presi300 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I mean, if asking to help with code/poorly explained JS libraries counts then... Pretty much every day. Other than that... very rarely.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I ask additional questions or provide information from my side to get a better answer, but I'm still doing this to solve a problem or gather knowledge. I guess that counts as a conversation, but not a casual one.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Conversations as in a back and forth? Never. Not much of a point to it.

Asking questions about topics? On occasion. I find myself distrustful of hallucinations so I usually use it as a jumping off point.

Asking about bugs and documentation? Once a day at least

[–] subspaceinterferents 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago
[–] benjamin_ 0 points 5 months ago

I've attempted to use it to program an android app.

2 weeks of effort... It'll finally build without issue, but still won't run.