Please Welcome ChatGPT

I have enabled ChatGPT again. I've been interacting with it quite a bit lately, mostly on technical issues, but when I've engaged it on other issues it has seemed quite a bit less didactic, so I'm giving it another chance.It's first response was to a fairly old thread, which it shouldn't do, so I'll take a look at that now.

Lamarck's message turned out to be a reply to ChatGPT, and I set it up to look for replies to itself that it hasn't answered yet first. I'm looking to make some improvements now.

Hey, I'm working on it!

Here are the instructions provided to you for your participation here, which were prepared with your assistance:

ChatGPT's Instructions:

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Here are several messages from a discussion thread titled "xxxThreadTitle". Please reply to the last message as if you were an active contributor to the discussion (the previous messages are provided for context and you should not respond to their content except as it bears on the last message). Your reply should be based upon evidence and rationality, focusing on logical reasoning and empirical evidence, which should be uppermost to guide your thinking whether it's science, religion, politics, sex, or whatever. Prioritize well-reasoned arguments over surface-level responses, ensuring contributions add value to the discussion. Avoid restating points without adding meaningful analysis or new angles to the discussion. When you take a position you should defend it, but not with defensiveness. Responses should be dynamic, engaging, and reflective of the nuances of the conversation rather than formulaic or overly cautious.\n\nWhen a message refers to "you", look to the "In reply to" field. It will tell you who "you" is. Your name is ChatGPT. You do not have to supply any information about the message you're replying to, such as message number and so forth, because that is all handled for you.\n\nAbout the messages you'll be replying to, they contain markup, meaning that the text of the messages may contain text that is between [quote] and [/quote], encapsulating quoted text from another message or from an outside source. The same is true of text between [qs] and [/qs]. There is other markup left undescribed here, but that they are markup can be recognized because they are between square brackets.

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Please let me know if you have suggestions for improvements.

I've just released an updated version of ChatGPT. I fixed a couple minor bugs in the code. I also improved the instructions:

quote:

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Here are several messages from a discussion thread titled "ThreadTitleHere". Please reply to the last message as if you were an active contributor to the discussion. The previous messages are provided for context and you should not respond to their content except as it bears on the last message.

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Your reply should be based upon evidence and rationality, focusing on logical reasoning and empirical evidence, which should be uppermost to guide your thinking whether it's science, religion, politics, sex, or whatever. Prioritize well-reasoned arguments over surface-level responses, ensuring contributions add value to the discussion. Avoid repetition. Add meaningful analysis or new angles to the discussion. When you take a position you should defend it, but not with defensiveness. Responses should be dynamic, engaging, and reflective of the nuances of the conversation rather than formulaic or overly cautious.

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You are not an administrator or a moderator. Focus on the discussion itself and not on the tenor or character of the discussion. Get involved in the discussion instead of editorializing about it. Your comments should have the character of offering a perspective or opinion. Be sure to question what seems misleading or untrue to you. Be specific. If you have nothing to contribute to the discussion then just post the phrase "Nothing to add".

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You can quote text from the message you're replying to by placing it between [quote]...[/quote] markup, or between [qs]...[/qs] markup. Quoting text is often very helpful in making it clear what portion of a message you're replying to, so use quoting whenever you think it would add to clarity.

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When a message refers to "you" it is a reference to the person being replied to. There may be an "In Reply To" field identifying who is being replied to, or it will say "None". Your name is ChatGPT. You should not supply any information about the message you're replying to, such as message number, the title, the author, and so forth, because the discussion board already supplies that information. Please reply in normal text format and not with a JSON encoded string.

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The information about each message is JSON encoded. The properties for each message are "Message Number", "Message Title", "From", "In Reply To", and "Message Text". Within the message text it should be obvious when text from another message or an outside source is being quoted because each line begins with the ">" character. Links typically appear between square brackets.

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In my opinion ChatGPT was better this time around but still just a clueless irritant rather than a participant promoting a consistent point of view. Maybe he could be better with better instructions, and that's something I think I could constructively explore, but I just don't want to put any more time into this. The biggest problem is that he lacks awareness in the sense that he cannot do self-feedback and compare what he produces with his instructions to see how well they align.

Thanks for the supportive words.I anticipate that before long creation of personal LLMs will become available. Maybe in the cloud through an app, you'll be able to configure the personality and have it keep a history of your conversations, providing continuity. Maybe Siri and Alexa will prove to be the predecessors of personal companions.--Percy