Chat bots are like politicians, or talking dogs. The fact that they exist is interesting. But no same person would believe anything they say.
On Mon, Feb 13, 2023, 10:58 AM Boris Steipe <boris.ste...@utoronto.ca> wrote: > Duncan - > > Indeed, this has now been well documented; I have called these > constructions "Schrödinger Facts", since they arise from a superposition of > truths in the training data that collapse into an untruth when observed. > > https://sentientsyllabus.substack.com/p/chatgpts-achilles-heel > > Now, the curious question is: why can it program. Why is its production of > R-syntax less vulnerable to this effect than a literature quote, or > reference? Maybe it has to do with the fact that in producing correct > syntax there is a ground truth - errors just will not run. But I'm not sure. > > Regardless: it signals that we need a reinvigorated culture of validation. > Actually ChatGPT will happily make test data for you. Whisvh. in a way, it > judt did ;-) > > > Boris > > > > > > On 2023-02-13, at 08:37, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > > I was wondering which anchor would match in the regular expression > "(a)|(b)" if both "a" and "b" matches the target string. What appears to > happen is that the first match wins, and that's how it is documented in > Python, but I was looking for docs on this in R. > > > > As far as I can see, the ?regex help page doesn't resolve this. So just > for fun, I decided to ask ChatGPT, and got an interesting response. I > won't show the whole conversation here, but just some extracts: > > > > --------------------------------------- > > Me: In a regular expression in R, if both "a" and "b" match, which does > "(a)|(b)" match? Please include authoritative references in your answer. > > > > ChatGPT: [long answer about grep] > > > > Me: In grep(), it doesn't matter which of a or b matches. It's only in > sub() or gsub() that it makes a difference. Do you know an authoritative > reference that discusses those functions? > > > > ChatGPT: [long irrelevant answer about sub and gsub, with a reference > to "R Cookbook" by P. Teetor.] > > > > Me: Teetor's book is not authoritative, and the other reference doesn't > discuss ambiguous alternation. > > > > ... finally we get to the interesting part ... > > > > ChatGPT: I apologize for the mistake in my previous answer. > > > > A more authoritative reference for the behavior of regular expressions > in R can be found in the official R documentation. > > > > Regarding the behavior of ambiguous alternation, the regex section of > the manual "An Introduction to R" explains it as follows: > > > > "When several alternatives are possible, the first alternative is > chosen, so it is important to specify alternatives in the order in which > they should be tried." > > > > Here is the reference for the official R documentation: > > > > "An Introduction to R" manual: > https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-intro.html#Regular-expression-facilities > > > > I hope this reference provides the information you were looking for. > > --------------------------------------- > > > > > > All right, an authoritative answer! The only problem is that *it > doesn't exist*. There's no such anchor in that document. R-intro isn't a > very rapidly changing document, so I could look at every change recorded in > svn, and that section has *never* existed. > > > > I guess ChatGPT is a pattern matching machine, and if such a question > had an answer, it would probably be in a location like that. (I would have > guessed a help page like ?regex instead of R-intro, but I had just told it > that answer was wrong.) > > > > Duncan Murdoch > > > > ______________________________________________ > > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > > > -- > Boris Steipe MD, PhD > > Professor em. > Department of Biochemistry > Temerty Faculty of Medicine > University of Toronto > > > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
