䷰ Mistakes
We need more guidence for these systems than eerily similar disclaimers:
- ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.
- Claude can make mistakes. Please double-check responses.
- Gemini can make mistakes, so double-check it.
They say it makes mistakes because they don’t know what to make of it. Ed Zitron is about the best critic shoveling these mistakes around. I have an example of my own.
I’m getting feedback on bits of this letter. My friend asks me to paste some into Google Docs because the comment management system is nice. I don’t use Google Docs. I ask Gemini if Google Docs can format Markdown. Gemi gives instructions. There are multiple steps. I go to Google Docs. I see Google Docs has Gemini integration. I ask Docs Gemi to set up Markdown for me. Docs Gemi says Google Docs can’t do anything with Markdown. I tell Docs Gemi what Web Gemi said. Now Docs Gemi says she remembers. Help me out Gemi. Gemi can’t change settings. I change the settings myself. I paste my Markdown. It doesn’t format. What’s up Gemi? The markdown formatting stuff only works for freshly typed text. Okay Gemi, how about you do the formatting for me, please? Docs Gemi, the Gemini agent specifically built into Google Docs, tells me it can’t edit text. What are you even for Gemi? Brainstorming, you say?! Here’s a brainstorm for you: I don’t want you to be my AI writing buddy. I don’t know you, and I can’t trust you. I only want your help getting things set up so I can talk to my real, actual, human friend about how to make AI suck less. Is that too much to ask, Gemi? Can you take a memo for your human handler for me, Gemi? Hi, my name is Karen.
I’m wearing a stupid a yellow hat, but these guys are the clowns. I don’t blame them though, they don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I make more mistakes than the opposite even after double-checking. Take chances, get messy!
Remember ChatGPT 3.5, that gloriously sophisticated autocomplete, that corpus incorporated that locates mistakes as a statistical mean?
That old Chat sent me an accidental valentine in 2023. I started to write, just for lols:
Please rewrite this paragraph to be more clear and concise
then my fingers slipped: return before paste. So Chat came up with both the paragraph and the rewrite.
Original paragraph:
The fact of the matter is that, at the end of the day, we’re all human beings and we all make mistakes. It’s important to remember that no one is perfect and to not be too hard on ourselves or others when things don’t go exactly as planned. In order to move forward, we need to acknowledge our mistakes and take responsibility for them. By doing so, we can learn from them and become better individuals.
Rewritten paragraph:
As humans, we all make mistakes. It’s essential to acknowledge and take responsibility for them without being too hard on ourselves or others. Learning from our mistakes helps us become better individuals and move forward.
Poetic. And now in 2025?
Paste the paragraph (or a screenshot of it), and tell me the intended audience and tone (formal, neutral, casual). If you do not specify, I will default to clear, neutral, and concise.
Pragmatic. More in line with language game expectations. Now Chat revises the “original paragraph” to:
We all make mistakes. When things do not go as planned, avoid being too hard on yourself or others. Acknowledge what happened, take responsibility, and learn from it so you can move forward and improve.
Clear. Active voice. Better. But maybe the old, less agentic ChatGPT was better at accessing the collective unconscious of its training texts. Does better phrasing make a paragraph mean more? Did the original mean anything?