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History 30/130A: The French Revolution

Critically Evaluate responses

It's great that ChatGPT can provide you with information - it's almost like a search engine, but remember that its knowledge is not current and that it's generating new text, so responses won't always be the same. 

It's important for you to critically evaluate the responses that you get from ChatGPT or Gemini. According to OpenAi, there are three limitations you should know about ChatGPT:

  • ChatGPT may create "hallucinations" - incorrect or misleading information that may sound convincing. Sometimes, these are facts that it makes up, but they can also be false citations or quotes. It might also take sides on an argument when you don't want it to.
  • It may not have the most up-to-date information since its training data ends at September 2021. It also was trained primarily on English-language sources. So it knows quite a bit, but it doesn't know everything. 
  • Additionally, it doesn't have access to search online to confirm results, nor can it verify facts or calculations.

While this list is mostly for ChatGPT-3.5, you should evaluate responses you get from any generative AI tool (Bard, Bing, ChatGPT-4, etc.). One of the most important skills moving forward will be the ability to critically evaluate information, so make sure to brush up on the technique presented below. Feel free to share any other techniques you use to validate information!

Verifying Information from ChatGPT

Much like when you question information in a news article or confirm research information by reading other scholars' findings, you can apply those same techniques to 'fact-checking' generative AI; however, much like how technology evolves, so must our way of confirming the truth.  

One of these new techniques is Lateral Reading. Similar to what fact-checkers do, your goal when doing lateral reading is to look for other examples of the fact/statement that you are concerned about. This could involve checking references and confirming the information across multiple sources. For example, you may end up on several news sites to confirm that the event you looked up actually happened. 

For a more in-depth tutorial on lateral reading, check out this video from Crash Course Navigating Digital Information.