@Daojoan in the early 2000s, my mom was sending me nonsense emails and I was replying with snopes links. In the 2010s, that basically changed to her posting nonsense on Facebook.

So many people don't bother fact checking at all.

@Daojoan

I’m still like deer-in-the-headlights frozen since a colleague earlier this week just casually threw into a discussion about a complex, consequential, and costly legal question “well I checked on ChatGPT and it said…” as though that was some kind of mic drop.

I just wasn’t prepared for this. My jaw was on the floor.

Spoiler alert: ChatGPT was 100% wrong, like exactly the inverse of the true fact, of the complex, consequential, and costly legal question. A yes/no question where the answer was ‘no’ and ChatGPT said ‘yes’.

I bet they’ll keep using it though 🤷🏼‍♂️

@Daojoan people rarely fact check things from Fedi, if they agree with them

Why would you be surprised about the rest of those?

Folks tend to have this attitude that people started out decent, then got caught up in lies online and turned into hateful monsters

I'm more of the opinion the lies just gave them ammunition for what they were already thinking

@Daojoan it´s like people believe what they see in advertisting and take that as information....

also your post reminded me of people who were annoyed when they had to wash hands because of covid. and I was really shocked that this seemed something new to them.

@Daojoan What also worries me is that Chatbots give different answers when you ask the same question in different languages. Even the sources GPT mentioned were different.

There is really no I in AI.

@Daojoan a person very close to me doesn't trust Wikipedia because "anybody can write there" (in spite of it being one of the few big multi-party curated media), but will happily take as truth any random conspiracy theory someone relays on social media, even if it doesn't make any sense at all once you apply a drop of logic to it...

e.g.: https://fakenews.pl/en/environment/rainforest-alliance-atrazine-and-bill-gates-we-verify-the-narratives-around-the-green-frog-logo/

@Daojoan
Yeah that makes sense.

By the way who is still depending on ChatGPT for search results?

@Daojoan People do this in person ALL the time as well and I hate it so much

Notice when the people around you preface things with "I don't know if this is true, but someone told me that....".

Then notice people who tell you things WITHOUT that preface.

My M-i-L is the latter type. Fortunately she's surrounded by fact-checkers so the things she hears and says aren't usually complete nonsense.

But I did once tell her that I thought it was "morally wrong" to repeat a claim without clarifying whether you knew the claim to be true of your own knowledge.