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Comment by p1mrx | Hacker News Reader

Here's an example of a Physics question that it gets wrong:

> Me: An escalator is moving down at a constant speed. I am walking up the escalator at the same speed, such that my height above the ground is constant. Am I getting a workout?

> ChatGPT: No, you are not getting a workout in this situation. Walking up an escalator at the same speed as the escalator is moving down will keep your height above the ground constant, but it will not provide any physical exertion or exercise. To get a workout, you would need to be doing an activity that requires physical effort and causes your heart rate and breathing to increase. This could include activities such as running, lifting weights, or climbing stairs.

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My physics professor would get it wrong too. Something something the amount of work done is 0.

With it being referred to as a physics problem, I thought they were foreshadowing ChatGPT responding that the amount of work done being zero.

I don't know how ChatGPT works, but it often feels like it is making inferences from data and those inferences are reasonable sounding but ultimately incorrect. In this case, it would be conflating work with workout. In one of my experiments, I was asking it about something in a children's book. ChatGPT ended up mixing up something that happened early in the story with something that happened at the end of the story, even though they were unrelated.

If you're not observing the outside world, then the reference frames "at rest" and "moving at a constant speed" are indistinguishable.

Climbing a staircase requires the same amount of work as climbing a down-escalator. The escalator "wants" to accelerate when you do work on it, but instead this work gets dumped into the braking mechanism, in order to maintain a constant speed.

That is a good one. To offer another explanation, one that doesn't involve changing reference frames, note that the step moves down as your foot pushes down on it, which by definition means work is being done.

i got:

Yes, you are getting a workout. Even though your height above the ground is constant, you are still expending energy to walk up the escalator against the downward movement.

Edit the answer and try again. Some conversations are dumber than others.

Also a Phys. Ed. question…

Hopefully the many “AI-powered” fitness apps out there would not give this advice.

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