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An experiment with Bing chatbot.

sjastro

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With all the chatbot posts in this forum, I decided to test Bing with science and maths questions of various difficulty.

(1) Explain how the Schwarzschild metric when expressed in Droste-Hilbert coordinates results in the speed of light being anisotropic.
Calculate the difference Δv between the radial and peripheral velocity of light at the Earth’s surface.
Oh well this was too tough for the chatbot.
This is a honours level question in applied mathematics.

Here is the answer.
The Schwarzschild metric in Droste-Hilbert coordinates is;

ds² = c²(1-2MG/ c²r)dt² - dr²/ (1-2MG/c²r) -r²(dθ²+sin²θdϕ²)

One needs to look at the radial and peripheral velocity of light.
Since light travels along null geodesics ds² =0.
For the radial velocity dr/dt, dθ = dϕ = 0 and the metric reduces to;

dr/dt = c(1-2MG/c²r)

For the peripheral velocity rdθ/dt, dr = dϕ = 0 and the metric reduces to;

rdθ/dt = c(1-2MG/c²r)⁰·⁵ ≈ c(1-(1/2)2MG/c²r) as 2MG/c²r is very small for Earth.

The difference between the radial and peripheral velocity is;
Δv = c(2MG/c²)(1/2) = 21 cm/sec.

I tried a much simpler question.
(2) What is the Schwarzschild metric?
No surprises here Bing like any search engine would have found the answer.
It would have done even better if it showed the mathematical form of the metric.

I needed a question of intermediate complexity.
(3) I am driving at a uniform speed of 60 km/hr in one direction and at 80 km/hr per during the return journey, what is my average speed over the entire trip?


This was a "trick" question.
Impulsively one would say the answer is simply the average of the forward and return speeds and equals 70 km/hr.
Bing got the maths right but the calculation wrong!!
The correct answer is.
(2d) / ((d/60) + (d/80)) = 480/7 ≈ 68.6 km/hr.
In the calculations Bing used d instead of 2d for the total distance.

I would give Bing 5/10.
 
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Hans Blaster

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Harmonic means can be a bit tricky, but shockingly BingBot sets up the problem correctly and even writes down the correct expression (the same one you do) and then *still* fails by failing to solve a simple algebraic transformation. Shocking.
 
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sjastro

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Harmonic means can be a bit tricky, but shockingly BingBot sets up the problem correctly and even writes down the correct expression (the same one you do) and then *still* fails by failing to solve a simple algebraic transformation. Shocking.
Yes it is rather disconcerting, it's like using a calculator which gives the wrong answer even when the correct numbers have been punched in.
I decided to give Bing another chance using a variant to question (3).

A space ship travels from the Earth to the Moon at a speed of 60,000 km/hr and 50,000 km/hr from the Moon to the Earth.
What is the average speed over the entire trip?
Bing didn’t have to go through this long winded exercise.
It could simplify the answer based on the modifying the formula from its response to question (3), in this case;

Average speed = (2d) / ((d/60000) + (d/50000)) where d is the Earth Moon distance.
(2d) / ((d/60000) + (d/50000))= (2 x 300000)/11 = 54,546 km/hr.

The answer is slightly different as it isn’t subject to rounding off errors as in Bing’s calculations but at least it didn't make a mess of the answer like it did for question (3).
 
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sjastro

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I gave Bing a test on logical thinking.

There are three sealed boxes containing research papers.
One box is labelled quantum mechanics research papers, one box general relativity research papers, and the other a mixture of quantum mechanics and general relativity research papers
The only information I am provided with is the boxes are incorrectly labelled.
I am allowed to open one box.
Which box should I open to determine the contents of all the boxes?

Bing got the right answer but since it is based on supervised learning I'm sure somewhere in its large database provided by humans it found using pattern recognition a similar problem to find the answer.
The second paragraph is babbling as I didn't ask it any questions on quantum mechanics or general relativity.

What would be impressive if a chatbot based on reinforcement learning was able to solve the problem where there is no human interaction in the learning process.

 
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Mark Quayle

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If Bing had common sense to check itself, it would have seen its answer was ludicrous.

Not being a mathematician as such, but being leery of trick questions, I'll ask: Is your calculation about the average of the two speeds, or about the average taking into account the proportion of time spent on each of the two legs?

The problem here is how the question is stated. "Over the entire trip" is perhaps implicative, but not quite specific, seems to me.

Reminds me of my sister asking 15 or so more questions in order to answer, "A 60' power pole falls across a 33' roadbed. How much of it lays on the other side of the road?" (And, of course, the teacher getting upset —"JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION!")
 
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Mark Quayle

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On one of the forums, someone asked Open AI a question concerning Free Will vs Predestination. It became pretty quickly obvious that it can operate only according to information it had been given. Whether that is the same as Reinforcement Learning or use of Bandwagon Fallacy, or perhaps even Confirmation Bias, (given that there can be little doubt some things taught it are given higher priority/ truth-value than other things), it seems pretty obvious that there is more fed to it by assertion than by reason. The OP even tried to back up the results by saying that the AI was given full access to internet sources. It sounded to me more like a parrot than a reasoning individual.
 
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sjastro

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The key term is “over the entire trip” where the average velocity is the total distance travelled divided by the total time and does not factor in acceleration.
This is not the same as averaging the speeds for the two legs.

Bing correctly identified the equation only to mess up the final calculation.
The problem highlights that while it might appear intuitive to average the two speeds it does not give the most accurate answer.
 
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sjastro

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Open AI is based on supervised learning and is trained by humans.
The point about reinforcement learning is human interaction is minimal and the AI does not acquire human prejudices in the process such exhibiting bias against the hiring of female workers.
Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

An example of AI based on reinforcement learning is the chess program Leela Chess Zero.
The end result is Leela Chess Zero plays chess at a superhuman level beyond the understanding of even the very best human chess players.
 
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sfs

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Free version of ChatGPT answering 'Can science prove the Bible':
 

sfs

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sjastro

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Free version of ChatGPT answering 'Can science prove the Bible':
Compared to ChatGPT's "measured" response, Bing is a fundamentalist.

I posed a more specific question to Bing on the subject.
Is Exodus supported by archaeological evidence?
The facts are there is no archaeological evidence which supports Exodus.
 
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Halbhh

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Free version of ChatGPT answering 'Can science prove the Bible':
The bot got lucky and quoted a better quote there on that one it seems.
 
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Halbhh

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Compared to ChatGPT's "measured" response, Bing is a fundamentalist.

I posed a more specific question to Bing on the subject.
Is Exodus supported by archaeological evidence?

The facts are there is no archaeological evidence which supports Exodus.
Meaning the miraculous part, right? (*note below)

This (secular) article was interesting on the archeological evidence about Semites in Egypt though.
(of course, I don't think of such findings as exhaustive (more might be found in the future), but they are interesting anyway)

--------
(* --actual evidence of a miraculous event that any skeptic could examine would actually invalidate key pieces of the New Testament, which says we are to have 'faith' without seeing proof (to paraphrase), instead of just a belief based on already examined conclusive evidence. I.e. -- to use a simple illustration, if we found Noah's Ark (which I think is actually just a parable story...) and it was actually like described in the text, it would provoke a theological crisis in that much of the New Testament would then seem mistaken about what 'faith' is. In order for 'faith' as in the New Testament to be possible, there must not be (previous) conclusive evidence of God or miracles (physically impossible events) -- at least not for any individual until after they have such faith, since that preexisting faith before evidence is the explicit goal of God's will for humanity, we read in the New Testament.

So, logically, God could even be expected to (if needed) send agents to remove any such conclusive evidence, etc. )
 
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sjastro

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This sounds very much like an AV argument of God removing evidence in this case of the global flood.

The archaeological evidence can be presented in two ways direct and indirect.
Let’s suppose the direct evidence for Exodus was removed such as 2,000,000+ men, women and children leaving no trace of their existence after roaming the Sinai for 40 years.

There is the indirect evidence from Egypt which contradicts the Exodus.
The population during the pharaonic period (3200 BC – 30 BC) never exceeded 3,000,000 as the amount of fertile land available through agriculture could not support larger populations.
A sudden population loss of 2,000,000+ would have meant the end of Egyptian civilization as the infrastructure would have collapsed.
The archaeological evidence from the pharaonic period shows Egypt went through three intermediate periods of instability caused by various factors such as climate change resulting in a decline of Egyptian agriculture as the annual Nile floods diminished in frequency, foreign incursions such as the Hyksos, and the rise in power of the priesthood which undermined the central authority of the pharaohs.
None of these however ended the Egyptian civilization.
 
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mindlight

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ChatGPT seems to have gotten some of these questions right. The danger here is that the conversational AI becomes trusted for answers because mainly gets them right, but then it makes these really big mistakes, and because of people's reliance on the technology they are no longer trained enough to spot them. This relationship with AI will have to be a partnership and requires people to be at a certain level of proficiency to be able to ask the right questions and spot obvious errors. The notion that machine learning can generate results meaningful to humans requires that rules are enforced and reality checking is built in
 
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