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I am completely new to AI and hardly know anything about coding. I have been playing around with the playground just asking random questions and whenever I ask the date “davinci” always gives me the wrong answer. I also ask the time and it gives me a wrong time. But when I rebut the answer it tells me that I’m right and my calendar and clock is correct. If someone could also help me with how to run the engine properly that would be great. I have a great idea on how AI can help benefit the entire world any help to see my ideas come to life would be greatly appreciated.

2

Hi Noah,

Thanks for your questions.

The API is a text interface that does not have access to the Internet or current events. In other words, it can’t “pull facts” like the current date and time, weather, stock prices, and so on. I’d use other APIs for that kind of information.

Rather, it’s used for things like generating and classifying text, by predicting the next words in a sequence.

I’d suggest jumping into the documentation to get an overview of how the API works and how you can interface with the language models in different ways.

The example prompts are also a great way to see examples of how other people are using the API.

Best,
Joey

1 Like
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Is it possible for the API to predict the current date and time? When I first tested out Q&A on the playground it gave me the correct answer for both.

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That’s really impressive, but it’s just coincidence.

5

This happened to me too. I had a question about incremental backup and it gave me an example with the date of today. I don’t think this is a coincidence.

My question: does somehow the current data get input in the neural network?

6

No.

The neutral network you are talking has no connection to the Internet. It has no system clock and it has no clue of the time.

Without seeing your code it’s hard to tell; but as mentioned before the underlying models have no system clock and no knowledge of time.

If you have an exact Playground prompt and settings which you would like for us to review, please post a full screenshot of the setting and the text of your prompt.

If you are using the playground, of course it is possible that there could be some web code the the Playground Javascript to grab clock information, but the underlying OpenAI model has no clock and cannot tell time.

Waiting on your prompt and settings to test …

HTH

:slight_smile:

7

Chat excerpt:

Me: I am sure you have some textual data about incremental backups. What do this data say how to call the backup snapshot being made at a certain time? Backup snapshot of a timestamp?

ChatGPT: Yes, incremental backups are a common data backup strategy used to backup only the changes made since the last backup, reducing the amount of data that needs to be backed up and the time required for the backup process.

Typically, in the context of incremental backups, the backup snapshot taken at a certain time is referred to as an “incremental backup” or “incremental snapshot.” This is because the backup only contains the changes made since the last backup, and therefore only represents an incremental addition to the previous backup.

However, it is also common to include a timestamp in the naming convention of the backup snapshot to indicate the time at which it was taken. For example, an incremental backup taken on March 20th, 2023 at 1:00 PM might be named something like “incremental-backup-20230320-1300.” Including the timestamp in the naming convention can help with tracking and organizing backups over time, especially when dealing with multiple backup snapshots.

Me: Thank you. I am surprised that you know the date of today. I assumed that your data has a cutoff in 2021.

ChatGPT: You’re welcome! As an AI language model, I do not have access to real-time information or have a “current” date in the traditional sense. However, I can generate responses based on the data and knowledge that I was trained on, which includes a wide range of topics up to September 2021.

In my previous response, I simply used a hypothetical date in the future as an example to illustrate the naming convention for backup snapshots. Sorry for any confusion

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You did not provide any details of the model you used or the params.

Details matter.

:slight_smile:

9

Screenshot 2023-03-20 at 13-42-44 ChatGPT
Screenshot 2023-03-20 at 13-42-44 ChatGPT990×1412 134 KB

Please advise about the settings of ChatGPT. Thank you.

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SO, you are talking about ChatGPT, not the Playground; but the title of this topic is about the Playground, not ChatGPT.

Hence the confusion…

:slight_smile:

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I just duckduckwent site:openai.com "current date" and this was the only answer I found.

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Yes, I can do that as well, but that date is not coming from the model, it’s coming from a filter (a process) in the ChatGPT application to reply to such a query directly without sending the prompt to the model:

Screenshot 2023-03-20 at 7.48.13 PM
Screenshot 2023-03-20 at 7.48.13 PM1274×282 13.6 KB

HTH

:slight_smile:

13

I tried it in German and it told me that it is just an AI and doesn’t have access to current date and told me to look at my computer clock.

And then my hair stood on end that it casually included the correct time stamp as an example.

Screenshot 2023-03-20 at 13-52-00 ChatGPT
Screenshot 2023-03-20 at 13-52-00 ChatGPT1700×1322 150 KB

14

I am not follow your point.

The models have no concept of time; however, anyone given enough time and effort, can cause the models to hallucinate.

Since we do not know every prompt you have sent to the model, it is not prudent to keep commenting further.

The fact is that the model has no system clock; it’s a language model generating text, blah blah blah based on the information you have provided it.

Enjoy.

:slight_smile:

15

Yes, you are right. I got caught by ChatGPT hallucinating. I am sorry for having cried wolf. Thank you for your time. It was helpful.

I tried again, and it answered partially correctly in German (used the wrong timezone) but at least the date was correct.

Screenshot 2023-03-20 at 13-56-38 ChatGPT
Screenshot 2023-03-20 at 13-56-38 ChatGPT750×1413 47.5 KB

16

That is because you are in a chat session and the ChatGPT application has retained information from your prior chats in the session, etc.

In addition, as I have mentioned, OpenAI has “filters” in place to intercept obvious consumer prompts to ChatGPT and process that prompt before sending the prompt to the model.

Enjoy!

:slight_smile:

17

I would like to understand more about pre-prompting ChatGPT and providing it with additional information like

“filters” in place to intercept obvious consumer prompts

Could you give me links to current explanations or even source code to read about this?

18

OpenAI’s source code and how they tweak their ChatGPT web app is proprietary and not open source.

Take care and enjoy!

I am sure someone else can help you better than I was able to satisfy your interest in this topic.

TBH, @nkoq , I rarely use ChatGPT and only use the API.

:slight_smile: