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Comment by gtsteve | Hacker News Reader

I hadn't heard of this website. Is there a page that describes what it does? When I navigate to poe.com, it just wants me to enter my email address and make an account, and I'd like to learn about what it can do first.

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This annoys me, as well, when web services do this, but I did sign up out of curiosity back when I was looking for some easy-access AI to play with and learn. In my relatively uninformed opinion, Poe offers just that.

I wasn't so much interested in image generation, but looking for a sort of AI assistant that I could use as a rubber duck, helping me reframe problems and (hopefully) try different solutions. Yes, it's basically learned from Quora, but like any other Q&A site, you will always have a mix of actual good info and overly-opinionated hogwash (SE, anyone?). And, like any Q&A site, it's up to the reader to separate the wheat from the chaff, so an AI chatbot is no different.

What I liked about Poe is the Android app. Its convenient, smooth, and seems to be a little more versatile than other chatbot apps. It's easy to pop it open and prompt for a code snippet, or some random bit of EE knowledge while I'm at work instead of digging through the fluff pile of modern Google ad-driven results.

In short, what it does is act as a simple chatbot assistant, and should not be taken exceedingly seriously. Also, I never paid a dime for it get good use out of it, so it's wort trying, if anything.

In my morning haze, I forgot to mention that pretty much exclusively use the General Assistant bot on Poe's platform. I might muck around with other bots out of boredom, but I find the Assistant to be fine for my minimal needs. That said, it is important to understand how you plan to use a bot and your expectations of the results before selecting one. None of them are magic bullets, yet.

So, the site is trained on Quora alone or it's the same library as OpenAI with added training from Quora? (The answers on Quora are terrible, IMHO, so if it's exclusively trained on that - omg no thanks!)

Also - rubber duck?

So far as I can tell, Quora is a bit cagey about how these bots were trained, assuming due to third party involvement, so I am not finding any concrete info. That said, I'm also not using it for research-dependant questions or in situations where incorrect info results in catastrophy. I work with and test electromechanical industrial devices, and I find myself using Poe Assistant mostly for quick reference of expected component values or filling it gaps of little programs I make to automate simple tasks for myself. I have not run into any issues where the information Poe Assistant provided was decidedly false, but there have been times where I double-checked slightly more crucial info. Again, choice of chatbot seems to be a balancing act of convenience and user intentions or need, so mileage may vary.

As for rubber ducking, it's the concept of talking to an inanimate object (like a rubber duck) to help with problem solving. It's something I find very helpful and have been doing since I was a kid, but it was coined in the book The Pragmatic Programmer, which is a good read if you're so inclined.

After my other reply to you, it occured to me to simply ask Poe Assistant to see if I got a different answer. Here is the response to the question "what data was used to train you?"

I have been trained on a diverse range of data from the internet. This includes books, articles, websites, and other text sources, to develop a broad understanding of human language. However, the specific datasets and details of the training process used to train me have not been disclosed publicly by OpenAI, the organization behind Assistant. I should note that while I strive to provide accurate and up-to-date information, I may not always have the most current data on certain topics since my training only goes up until September 2021, and I don't have access to real-time information.

It's sort of an aggregator of different AI models. A customisable chatbot where you can choose between GPT-4, PaLM, LLama, Claude, etc. With user-created bots available through a search and explore page - sort of like an Instagram for bots and AI (which is how it was described in a tweet or something that led me to it).

Agreed their website could explain itself better but I think the actual offering is pretty substantial.

I guess that confirms that it was made by Quora.

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