Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

A chatbot can be used to check a longer piece of writing for content.

I was recently testing chatbots to determine if they could pull information from long pieces of writing. I attached an autobiography that was more than 200 pages long. I then asked the chatbots what seemed like obvious questions. Three different chatbots failed the test.

Hmm. When three big-tech AI systems cannot find information in something I wrote, who failed the test? Perhaps it was me.

I opened the autobiography and searched for the information that the chatbots missed. Uh, er, well, it wasn’t there. How could I have omitted such important information? Well, I’m only human. I have made and continue to make mistakes.

The good news is that I found a new tool for performing a deeper test of what I have written. Attach a piece of writing to a chatbot. My written piece should contain certain information. Ask the chatbot to repeat that information. If the chatbot can’t, perhaps the information isn’t there. Perhaps I intended to put the information in the piece. Perhaps I felt it was obvious and didn’t need to be there. Perhaps I merely made yet another mistake.

The good news is that I found a new tool for performing a deeper test of what I have written.