Amid concerns about students using artificial intelligence and programs like OpenAI’s ChatGTP to do assignments, we feel obliged to warn kids doing homework not to rely on it for biographical research.
It seems one thing on the internet that the chatbot hasn’t bothered to scour for information is LinkedIn profiles, if the responses offering professional biographies we saw today are anything to go buy.
Startup Daily has written previously about how ChatGPT makes up facts and even lives about them when caught out. Christopher Graves, founder of the Ogilvy Center for Behavioral Science, caught ChatGTP making up supposed scientific references to dress up a response.
“It will not hesitate to lie and fabricate them… and then confessed. I asked it to not lie and again to seek actual studies. It lied again,” he said.
And Wired journalist Clive Thompson labelled it an AI-generated “bullshitter”, listing many more examples.
While it has its uses, ChatGPT also become the new version of “Google yourself” and the results are equally surprising.
This writer was suitably humbled a few weeks ago when we asked ChatGPT to tell us what it knew about me.
Despite having more than 10,000 stories online in publications around the world, the response was basically “never heard of ‘im”.
“Not well known or is a relatively unknown journalist”. Ouch. *Taps on Gotye’s ‘Somebody that I used to know’ on Spotify and softly weeps…*
Nobody with that name ’round ‘ere, Guv.
Well, serves me right for never writing my own Wikipedia entry, unlike so many of my colleagues.
Meanwhile, CNET journalist Mark Serrels asked ChatGPT to tell him about himself and was surprised to discover he’s written books he didn’t know he had.
ChatGPT reckons I wrote this book that I didn’t write lmao pic.twitter.com/Gv56sCc5fn
— Mark Serrels (@Serrels) February 28, 2023
Others in tech joined in, including Dead Static Drive creator Mike Blackney and discovered their own previously unknown novels and career highlights.
staggering how much info it can come up with that feels on the right track but is completely wrong pic.twitter.com/IaggiLkOlb
— mike “GDC” blackney (@kurtruslfanclub) February 28, 2023
So using the question Serrels put to ChatGPT, we tried asking to me. And I sound amazing.
Wow, he sounds interesting!
Only problem is that while I edited several editions of The SMH Good Food Guide, and contributed to many other books, at no stage did I write books about sea rescues or celebrity secrets. And while it would have been nice to write for GQ among dozens of magazines I contributed to regularly, I never did.
And yes I was part of the founding team at Business Insider Australia, but I was 2IC, associate editor, and until 2019, not 2017.
As for TV, there were Masterchef appearances, an Iron Chef series on Ch 7, and Perfect Match – a story for another time – back in the ’80s, as well as a longing to appear on the ABC’s Spicks & Specks, but the closest I’ve been to The Project is watching Waleed Aly clips on Twitter. Today Extra? Working for Kochie, I’m a Sunrise kinda guy.
Some would question my expertise in the fields cited too.
The lesson in all of this is if you’re looking to update your CV, ChatGPT might be a great solution, because your career will be more varied and prestigious than it really is.
But if anyone sends you their ChatGTP bio as a job application, run.
