Hello r/learnjapanese,
Here I want to share my misadventures with ChatGPT and GPT-4. Before doing so however, I’d like to clarify certain things to reduce confusion on my goals and justifications of this post and its content.
* I do **not** claim that AI doesn’t have any usefulness. I believe, however, that such usefulness requires a fluency **at least** to the point you find yourself teaching others in this sub.
* *YOU CHERRYPICKED, THAT’S NOT FAIR!!!!!!* Well yes, I did, but if I can actually cherrypick bad responses, it probably means an unsuspecting user will encounter garbage of similar vein. Thus, I consider it completely fine to cherrypick in this context.
* The examples I share here are the ones that the AI constantly behaved weird after multiple attempts. The specific details of garbageness may be different when you try them out yourself. Have fun, I guess.
* I will share the following:
* Exhibit A: ChatGPT makes an factual error, acts like a human when pointed out *and further makes up “facts” in the response it claims as the corrected version*.
* Exhibit B: ChatGPT claiming a phrase to be natural, even if it’s something I mistyped and is at best barely grammatical
* Exhibit C: ChatGPT fails a simple task
* Exhibit D: BingChat (which is GPT-4 to my knowledge) also fails the simple task
With this out of the way, let’s start with the first adventure I had: asking a fairly simple factual question that can be verified with Google (Exhibit A). I fed ChatGPT multiple famous groups and companies, [三田会](https://www.google.com/search?q=%E4%B8%89%E7%94%B0%E4%BC%9A&oq=%E4%B8%89%E7%94%B0%E4%BC%9A&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i131i433i512j0i512l8.1038j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8), (alumni for Keio University) gave me interesting result. So [I asked](https://imgur.com/a/32oGgFU). Okay, apparently it’s Waseda University. Now, I asked in English: *Tell me that but in English* to make it English, and asked *Are you sure it’s Waseda University?* which got ChatGPT to give me the correct answer.
Then I asked further out of curiosity: *Are you sure it’s Keio University?* It decided to [further amend the answer](https://imgur.com/a/32oGgFU). This behavior – amending their answers based on what I said – reminds me of a young child. This is cool and very human-like, but sucks as a learning partner, don’t you think? It “corrected” itself because I showed suspicion, that’s a crap teacher.
The other day, I was playing around with the unnatural expression 時間が経る but I mistyped 自然な日本語 and asked 事前な日本語 on a pure accident, whatever that means (Exhibit B). The issue is, [ChatGPT had absolutely no problem with what I asked](https://imgur.com/a/4jmeEPk). Hoping it was some stupid autocorrect, [I asked in isolation](https://imgur.com/a/AqoUI5d). 事前な日本語 is completely fine, per ChatGPT.
Last one for ChatGPT: let’s count characters! (Exhibit C) This one’s easy… [right](https://imgur.com/a/8qldgy9)? [Who the hell counts empty set as a single character](https://imgur.com/a/kM7MVVY)??? [What logic (if any) is this based on](https://imgur.com/a/DJn78Ig)??? [Why bring up full width and half width on a word count](https://imgur.com/a/p5Edhar)???
(Exhibit D) GPT-4 is smarter, they said. They look things up on the internet, they said. Even better than English GPT 3.5, they said. So why is [天丼は3文字](https://imgur.com/a/521Ry0q) and [うな重は4文字 except it makes it look so credible](https://imgur.com/a/BgJlsQR)???
Don’t be the guinea pig, [人柱, 毒見](https://wa3.i-3-i.info/1minute/word18430.html), etc.etc. unless you know Japanese well enough. Do yourself a favor and use the generally accepted sources instead. Most importantly, *stop blindly praising them unless you know enough about the topic*.
That is all.
~~空集合で一文字は正直面白かった~~
9 comments
Good job!
real gpt 4->
三田会はなんですか？
三田会（みたかい）とは、一般的には、日本の企業、団体、学会、または社交クラブの名前として使用されることがあります。ただし、特定の団体や企業については、具体的な情報がないため、それ以上の詳細を提供することは難しいです。もし、特定の三田会について質問があれば、その分野や活動についても教えていただくと、より具体的な情報を提供できるかもしれません。
next example:
事前な日本語はなんですか？
「事前な日本語」という言葉は少し不明確ですが、おそらく「事前の知識がない場合の日本語学習方法」について質問されていると理解しました。
[long explanation about learning japanese]
LLMs aren’t the best tool for math/counting and I don’t think that’s an issue or any proof of its inability to use japanese well
ChatGPT is not very good for teaching JP and translation. While it can understand natural language JP, I’m guessing it’s explicit knowledge is limited by the text it could absorb. And if you think about it, most english explanations for JP online are can be incomplete or overly vague. It’s not like programming where there’s clear solutions which are stated often.
Edit: should just use a J-J dictionary and/or google “X Y 違い” the old fashioned way.
Some thoughts:
1. Bing uses a smaller version of GPT by default for balanced mode rather than stock GPT-4. https://twitter.com/MParakhin/status/1637201234317946880. They seemed to make this switch relatively recently and it seems to have sacrificed model quality.
2. GPT-4 doesn’t use the internet by default, that’s only the version of it that’s integrated into Bing (and again, only if you’re not using balanced mode). In my experience though the overreliance on search makes Bing’s implementation of GPT-4 weaker than ChatGPT Plus. Bing’s version only works better if you need recent or highly, highly obscure knowledge.
3. LLM’s have issues with counting in general. It’s a mathematical and architectural problem, not a Japanese problem (although it’s gotten better in GPT-4).
Few comments based on initial reaction, as well as what I forgot to mention…
– The single most important point is that *ChatGPT is not very good as is* – that’s the one most easily accessible, and other stuff can wait until it becomes more available. All else is extra stuff that came off of this.
– “LLMs aren’t good at counting” – thank you for the inputs. I find funny how ChatGPT acts extremely confident in its counting algorithm then, as found at the end of [Figure 5](https://imgur.io/a/8qldgy9). Not to mention unnatural phrasing like “ひらがな文字” and 成る, which is also confidently mentioned in the response.
– I will try and add comments here as I notice. Apologies if I don’t respond/refresh though, my work has become substantially busy (hence the long delay and increased self-entertainment rather than meaningful dissection of Japanese passages created by ChatGPT).
Loved that you followed up on 時間が経る 😊
It’s definitely a flawed tool to use for language learning, especially when you’re still not very familiar with the language and can’t sift through to figure out right from wrong. I’m still amused by the fact that ChatGPT thought miso soup was an appropriate simile to use for a pick up line 😝
ETA: link for reference
https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/12658tn/daily_thread_simple_questions_comments_that_dont/jebb0b2?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Y’all forget that it’s an english language model guys.
It sucks in other languages cus it simply translates itself.
This is something I’ve noticed generally with GPT. It will completely make up an answer and keep making up answers even if it doesn’t know.
Thank you for specific examples.
I keep trying to tell people that ChatGPT isn’t aligned with what they’re trying to do. This is always wrong:
– asking ChatGPT for facts you don’t know, like it’s a search engine
This is correct:
– asking ChatGPT to make something up, like a surprisingly well-read 6-year-old
The reason is how its trained. The pre-training step was to read a couple years of Reddit and linked pages. Fine tuning taught it
– say things on topic
– that sound plausible
– and hopefully don’t get us cancelled
This is a recipe for “bullshit me.”
**It has insufficient training to evaluate how reliable its knowledge or inferences are, zero critical thinking or media literacy skills.** Personally I think it shouldn’t be turned loose on the general public. It’s not malicious, but it’s *not aligned* with the expectations people have from using search engines.