ChatGPT and the revenge of history

I have been posing it many questions about Jonathan Swift, Adam Smith, and the Bible.  Chat does very well in all those areas, and rarely hallucinates.  Is it because those are settled, well-established texts, with none of the drama “still in action”?

I suspect Chat is a boon for the historian and the historian of ideas.  You can ask Chat about obscure Swift pamphlets and it knows more about them than Google does, or Wikipedia does, by a long mile.  Presumably it “reads” them for you?

When I ask about current economists or public intellectuals, however, more errors creep in.  Hallucinations become common rather than rare.  The most common hallucination I find is that Chat invents co-authorships and conference co-sponsorships like crazy.  If you ask it about two living people, and whether they have worked together, the fantasy life version will be rather active, maybe fifty percent of the time?

Presumably that bug will be fixed, but still it seems that for the time being Chat has shifted some real intellectual heft back in antiquarian directions.  Perhaps it is harder for statistical estimation to predict words about events that are still going on?

Here are some tips for using ChatGPT.

Of course Chat is already a part of my regular research and learning routine.  Woe be unto those who cannot or do not use it effectively!  I feel sorry for them, get with the program people…