[Rd] An interesting chat with ChatGPT

[Kevin Coombes]

Chat bots are like politicians, or talking dogs. The fact that they exist
is interesting. But no same person would believe anything they say.

On Mon, Feb 13, 2023, 10:58 AM Boris Steipe <boris.steipe using utoronto.ca>
wrote:

> Duncan -
>
> Indeed, this has now been well documented; I have called these
> constructions "Schrödinger Facts", since they arise from a superposition of
> truths in the training data that collapse into an untruth when observed.
>
>    https://sentientsyllabus.substack.com/p/chatgpts-achilles-heel
>
> Now, the curious question is: why can it program. Why is its production of
> R-syntax less vulnerable to this effect than a literature quote, or
> reference? Maybe it has to do with the fact that in producing correct
> syntax there is a ground truth - errors just will not run. But I'm not sure.
>
> Regardless: it signals that we need a reinvigorated culture of validation.
> Actually ChatGPT will happily make test data for you. Whisvh. in a way, it
> judt did  ;-)
>
>
> Boris
>
>
>
>
> > On 2023-02-13, at 08:37, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan using gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I was wondering which anchor would match in the regular expression
> "(a)|(b)" if both "a" and "b" matches the target string.  What appears to
> happen is that the first match wins, and that's how it is documented in
> Python, but I was looking for docs on this in R.
> >
> > As far as I can see, the ?regex help page doesn't resolve this. So just
> for fun, I decided to ask ChatGPT, and got an interesting response.  I
> won't show the whole conversation here, but just some extracts:
> >
> > ---------------------------------------
> > Me:  In a regular expression in R, if both "a" and "b" match, which does
> "(a)|(b)" match?  Please include authoritative references in your answer.
> >
> > ChatGPT: [long answer about grep]
> >
> > Me:  In grep(), it doesn't matter which of a or b matches.  It's only in
> sub() or gsub() that it makes a difference.  Do you know an authoritative
> reference that discusses those functions?
> >
> > ChatGPT:  [long irrelevant answer about sub and gsub, with a reference
> to "R Cookbook" by P. Teetor.]
> >
> > Me:  Teetor's book is not authoritative, and the other reference doesn't
> discuss ambiguous alternation.
> >
> > ... finally we get to the interesting part ...
> >
> > ChatGPT: I apologize for the mistake in my previous answer.
> >
> > A more authoritative reference for the behavior of regular expressions
> in R can be found in the official R documentation.
> >
> > Regarding the behavior of ambiguous alternation, the regex section of
> the manual "An Introduction to R" explains it as follows:
> >
> > "When several alternatives are possible, the first alternative is
> chosen, so it is important to specify alternatives in the order in which
> they should be tried."
> >
> > Here is the reference for the official R documentation:
> >
> >    "An Introduction to R" manual:
> https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-intro.html#Regular-expression-facilities
> >
> > I hope this reference provides the information you were looking for.
> > ---------------------------------------
> >
> >
> > All right, an authoritative answer!  The only problem is that *it
> doesn't exist*.  There's no such anchor in that document.  R-intro isn't a
> very rapidly changing document, so I could look at every change recorded in
> svn, and that section has *never* existed.
> >
> > I guess ChatGPT is a pattern matching machine, and if such a question
> had an answer, it would probably be in a location like that.  (I would have
> guessed a help page like ?regex instead of R-intro, but I had just told it
> that answer was wrong.)
> >
> > Duncan Murdoch
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
>
> --
> Boris Steipe MD, PhD
>
> Professor em.
> Department of Biochemistry
> Temerty Faculty of Medicine
> University of Toronto
>
>
>
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> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

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