ChatGPT and the Overzealous College Intern

I’m your new college intern. I don’t know shit. But I’m good at Google. I can search like the best of them. If you’re over 30, then you’re clueless to my powers of searching. You think you’re good at it, but you’re not. You didn’t get weaned on it like I did.

I can get right to the good stuff on any topic. Again, I don’t know shit, but I know where all the stuff is. I’m capable, and can absorb much of the standard wisdom on any issue. Some comes from Wikipedia, old school encyclopedias, YouTube videos, substacks, online journals, news media, blogs, literature, social media conversations, and so on.

I’m just a collator. I can pull together all that’s been said on a topic, wrap my head around it, smooth it a bit, and give you the skinny.

Alternatively, I’m an “averager.” What’s the average weight of someone from the Sudan? If all their weights are online, I’ll get you that average. But, my trick is that I can even average across more complex, structured knowledge. Here’s the “average” take on this topic, or that topic. I get those takes by “averaging” across all the human takes, and sometimes there are multiple takes, in which case I’ll give you those. …like me telling you that the distribution of weights in the Sudan is bimodal, one for each sex.

Asking Google for answers is something we’ve all gotten good at. But I’m not just better at it than almost anyone. The other advantage I have is that you’ve hired me to Google-search answers to your questions all day long. That’s all I’ll do! I’ll thereby be able to come back with much more detailed and complete answers to your questions. I’m just a variety of consulting service, giving you the crowd-sourced answer to your questions, where the crowd happens to be all humankind thus far.

Did I mention I don’t know shit, but am good at collating and explaining? I think I did mention that. It’s worth emphasizing that, though.

I can’t go beyond what humankind has already discovered, because I only know what humankind as a whole knows. If there are combinations of existing areas of knowledge that lead to substantive discoveries no one’s noticed, then I won’t notice them either.

I can only notice what humankind as a crowd has noticed.

Now, if you notice that there might be important connections between two things no one has noticed, I’ll definitely be able to help you get up to speed on those two areas. But that’s a whole nother thing.

And I’m definitely of no help in making genuinely novel developments. Did I mention I’m just an intern and don’t know shit?

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A Science Moment on this…