The screenshot above is another regular reminder from Yours Truly that the LLM isn’t always right, but the final decision is always yours. Sometimes, you need to sass back — not necessarily to get better results, but to remind yourself not to abdicate completely to AI.
In case the first line in my prompt sounds familiar, but you can’t place it, here’s the source:
Here’s the video version:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NPXjPWIj31g
How upset is Sam Altman about Anthropic’s Super Bowl ads for Claude, which poke fun at ChatGPT and their inclusion of ads? Upset enough to call them “authoritarian,” in the same way a tween would call their parents “fascist” because they wouldn’t give them permission to go to a slumber party.
But daaaaamn, are they memorable and funny.
There are four such ads, each one featuring two actors, with one playing the part of the user, and the other playing the part of ChatGPT. The acting is perfect, with the user clearly in need of answers, and ChatGPT with slightly delayed responses delivered in a saccharine tone and a creepy smile at the end (“Give me your creepiest fake smile!” must’ve been part of the audition process). All the ads end with a snippet of the rap version of Blu Cantrell’s 2003 number, Breathe, which features Sean Paul and one of the best beats from that era.
I’ve posted the four ads below, from my least to most favorite. Each one features a common LLM use case.
Here’s Treachery, where a student is asking ChatGPT to evaluate her essay:
Deception features ChatGPT providing advice on the user’s business idea:
Violation’s user wants a six-pack — the muscle kind, not the beard kind — and is about to regret telling ChatGPT his height:
And my favorite, Betrayal, starts with the user trying to get closer to his mom, and ends on a cougar-riffic note:
OpenAI CEO and owner of the world’s most punchable voice Sam Altman is, as the kids say, crashing out over these ads, calling them “dishonest” (they’re more hyperbolic) and “authoritarian” (which is Altman himself being hyperbolic):
…and the most blunt headline of the bunch:
I remember cringing at this one line from an episode of the 1990s TV series, Star Trek: Voyager:
Computer, install a recursive algorithm!
I always thought that you would never program a computer that way…until now.
Here’s your start-of-the-year reminder that you don’t have to accept your LLM’s answers as gospel. In fact, you do what I do — talk back to them Samuel L. Jackson / Nick Fury from The Avengers-style.
The screenshot above comes from an exchange I had with Gemini earlier today. I like using LLMs as a sounding board for ideas — as I like to say “the one thing you can’t do, no matter how creative or clever you are, is come up with ideas you’d never think of.”
Gemini suggested a course of action that I completely disagreed with, so I decided to respond with one of my favorite lines from the first Avengers film, and it responded with “touché.” Keep thinking, and don’t completely outsource your brain to AI!
And just as a treat, here’s that scene from The Avengers:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NPXjPWIj31g
This meme’s going in an upcoming video on the Global Nerdy YouTube channel.
I don’t understand the mobile app business anymore: Duolingo, the app famous for learning not-so-useful phrases in other languages, has put “coming soon” banners over four shuttered Hooters locations in the U.S..
The locations are:
Earlier this year, Hooters announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and closed a number of its locations.
Duolingo, who’ve always been a little bit odd with their self-promotion, have responded to queries as you might expect:
