Since this article was written by Ted Chiang, just for fun I asked ChatGPT to summarize the plot of "Understand".
Apparently ChatGPT thinks "Understand" is about the government who is pursuing someone called Gary Whittle who has superintelligence (well, at least it got one detail right). When challenged ("no, the government is not the antagonist, but there is one person...") ChatGPT amends its summary to this:
> "George Millwright is Gary Whittle's former supervisor and is depicted as being jealous of Gary's newfound abilities. He becomes obsessed with Gary and is determined to bring him down, even going so far as to threaten his family. George Millwright's actions drive much of the conflict in the story and serve as a reminder of the potential dangers of unchecked ambition and envy."
I'm honestly fascinated by ChatGPT's "hallucinations". I mean, it all makes perfect sense. Its summary is a potential scifi story -- albeit a poor, completely clichéd one -- but this is not at all what happens in "Understand"!
To stretch the thumbnail analogy from other threads, that feels like the “thumbnail” returned was a horse when you asked it to snapshot a car. Got the “mode of transport” intention correctly but gave you super inaccurate details..
Apparently ChatGPT thinks "Understand" is about the government who is pursuing someone called Gary Whittle who has superintelligence (well, at least it got one detail right). When challenged ("no, the government is not the antagonist, but there is one person...") ChatGPT amends its summary to this:
> "George Millwright is Gary Whittle's former supervisor and is depicted as being jealous of Gary's newfound abilities. He becomes obsessed with Gary and is determined to bring him down, even going so far as to threaten his family. George Millwright's actions drive much of the conflict in the story and serve as a reminder of the potential dangers of unchecked ambition and envy."
I'm honestly fascinated by ChatGPT's "hallucinations". I mean, it all makes perfect sense. Its summary is a potential scifi story -- albeit a poor, completely clichéd one -- but this is not at all what happens in "Understand"!
Text compression indeed.