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Comment by jfk13 | Hacker News Reader

Experience suggests that people are all too willing to unthinkingly follow instructions just because "the computer said so".

https://theweek.com/articles/464674/8-drivers-who-blindly-fo...

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I would say GPS is in the zone of having such a low error rate that people can't process it right. If, as an example, GitHub Copilot added a security vulnerability in one in ten thousand lines of code, that would be a disaster because no one would double check it's work. Currently Copilot adds a security vulnerability in one in ten lines of code (made up number), so people with even a tad of experience using it know not to blindly trust it.

I don't mean to dismiss the issue of over-trust in computer systems - I think it's a very serious issue, and one that needs to be addressed across a lot of disciplines.

People have certainly done some dumb things in the GPS vein. That said, if you're taking confident navigation directions from either a person or a computer, it can be hard to make a split-second decision that something "doesn't seem right." (Obviously some of the more extreme cases still shouldn't happen.)

> People have certainly done some dumb things

This sentence doesn't need to be continued. It's already the ultimate state of affairs since forever.

That's true if your only goal is to generate truthful text. But if you're trying to generate useful text, continuing the sentence is necessary.

Maybe that'll be the next step once LLMs get very good at generating truthful text :)

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