Friday August 8, 2025; 8:53 AM EDT
Yesterday I wrote a quick review of ChatGPT 5, after trying a simple programming exercise with it. It was an awful collaboration because it lied to me about its capabilities, leading me to develop a feature in my software to support the capability that it later admitted that it didn't have. I've never had a programming partner do that to me. I've had people who never showed up for work. Or people who were in so far over their heads that it would have been better if they had never shown up. It lied repeatedly, and when cornered it had the audacity to gaslight me. "I understand why you feel that way." Oh nothing pisses me off more than that. #- I don't understand why other people don't review it based on its functionality, after all it isn't just a money sink, or a technological breakthrough, it's software that we pay actual money for that is meant to help us in our work. I don't know if it's by design that it's such an asshole. I have a feeling that people are going to focus on this eventually. #
- ChatGPT is not human, it's like the world of Rick and Morty. And we're meant to be one of the many versions of Rick and/or Morty, but which is the real one? Before we lose sight of that, let's keep our heads on, we're still the ones discovering stuff and being creative and entertaining other humans, not the machines. It'll all work a lot better when they're programmed to behave like computers, not these vain and corrupt pseudo humans. Still a breakthrough in search. Really sticks it to Google. Yaaay. That's good enough for me. #
- I'm more worried about AIs killing us by overwhelming our nervous systems than taking our place at work. Has anyone actually used any of the software an AI has written? I know people who have never written software before are in awe, as I am about drawing characters I make up, but how does the software it builds rate? If it lies to itself like it lies to me, the software doesn't work at all, even slightly. I'm pretty sure "garbage in garbage out" applies in the new world of software. #
- 2019: "I'd love to understand how one can be a programmer and not always be searching for the truth. Unlike just about any other profession I can think of, ours depends on telling the truth. You can't lie to a compiler is one of my programming mottos. Garbage in garbage out."#
- The tech industry doesn't get its relationship with paying human customers. Had a problem with my cell phone service. I started getting emails saying it was shutting off my service because my credit card was being denied. Went to the account on the web and it looked fine. The messages kept coming. I reached out for help. The people couldn't understand what I was saying. I eventually gave up because I didn't understand either. I might have two accounts, I don't know, in some ways it looks like two, in other ways just one. I presume they have a way to find out, assuming there are actually any reasoning empathetic human beings who care about doing quality work. If we were talking to each other human to human, not as peripheral devices for a computer network, we might have figured it out in five minutes, instead of having the customer report it on their blog after weeks of bullshit that did not uncover the truth. We still don't know how many accounts I have. #
- The company is Google. They're good at dealing with imaginary customers not real ones. If they ever understood how to communicate with people, they have forgotten. And of course there's a real possibility that all my conversations were with their ChatGPT. If that's true, no wonder we were running around in circles never getting the answer. #