I tried giving this to ChatGPT. (Just by uploading the image to the base OpenAI interface.) I expected to either (a) have the model already know the question and give the right answer, (b) hallucinate an answer or (c) refuse to engage with the problem at all.

Instead, this happened:

https://chatgpt.com/share/682cce62-c53c-8003-be2c-2929395868...

Basically, the model confidently outputs a guess, then calculates it, determines it to be incorrect, and repeatedly tries again, even repeating the same guesses over and over. It does not recognize any symmetry and acts like a completely unstructured agent. In the end, the model vehemently asserts there to be no solutions to this puzzle. I really did not expect this and will update my beliefs accordingly if the models behave as badly with future puzzles.

Again one of the few advantages of having been round the sun a few more times than most is this isn’t the first time this has happened.

Packages were supposed to replace programming. They got you 70% of the way there as well.

Same with 4GLs, Visual Coding, CASE tools, even Rails and the rest of the opinionated web tools.

Every generation has to learn “There is no silver bullet”.

Even though Fred Brooks explained why in 1986. There are essential tasks and there are accidental tasks. The tools really only help with the accidental tasks.

AI is a fabulous tool that is way more flexible than previous attempts because I can just talk to it in English and it covers every accidental issue you can imagine. But it can’t do the essential work of complexity management for the same reason it can’t prove an unproven maths problem.

As it stands we still need human brains to do those things.

The decaf process seems expensive so you might expect the end result to cost more, but it never does. Which means either the producers are making less profit on decaf, or they are using lower quality beans. If the latter is true, which seems more likely, that might explain why decaf sometimes tastes less good, separately from the effect of the process itself on taste.

How long before we use ChatGPT to create ChatGPT prompts?