New ask Hacker News story: Tell HN: ChatGPT Writes an Electrician’s Manual

Tell HN: ChatGPT Writes an Electrician’s Manual
2 by maxutility | 3 comments on Hacker News.
As an exercise in curiosity, I decided to see whether ChatGPT would write reasonably convincing instructions for rewiring your home. In return, ChatGPT wrote a plausible (to a layman) fourteen hundred word guide in six short chapters. (Word of warning: don’t use this or ChatGPT as a guide for performing any potentially dangerous or destructive activity) Table of contents: Chapter 1: Preparation Chapter 2: Removing the Faulty Knob and Tube Wiring Chapter 3: Installing New Wiring Chapter 4: Labeling and Documenting the New Wiring Installation Chapter 5: Disposal of the Old Knob and Tube Wiring Chapter 6: Inspection and Testing Then, just for kicks, I followed up by asking ChatGPT to write and then explain a hypothetical critical Amazon user review. I’ll paste the entire prompt and response thread in a comment. My initial takeaways: 1. The internet has long had a problem with poorly written SEO spam how-to guides, and large language models are going to make the problem exponentially worse. 2. People and property may be seriously harmed and people may even die by following faulty instructions generated by large language models. (In this case I have no idea of whether the instructions I received were good or dangerously misguided/incomplete)