I tried talking to an AI chatbot for the first time today because I was looking for book recs with quite specific criteria and I thought, maybe an algorithm can help, by combing through every library database on Earth to find exactly what I’m looking for? Can they do that now?
I explained to the AI what I was looking for and it gave me a list of 5 books, all of which I had read. I asked if it had any other titles and it gave me 5 more books, which I had also read.
I said I hadn’t enjoyed such-and-such books from its list, and mentioned a book I had enjoyed more, hoping to gradually orient it towards more accurate book recs.
The AI said “This book sounds good. I’m going to ask you for more recommendations and I’ll put them on my to-read list”
…
The AI is now asking me for book recs. This is the opposite of why I’m here!!
Doggedly I rephrased my initial request, brought up some more books and said I was looking for something similar, and it gave me a new list of 5 titles. All of which I had read.
There are millions of books out there, please make an effort…?
I tried to encourage it by saying books 1 and 3 of its list sounded good and did it know of any more books like these? And it gave me another 5-book list—and I didn’t know any of them!!!
Victory!
I went on goodreads to look them up. And couldn’t find any of them. I tried google, and it didn’t know these books either.
… did the AI grow so desperate it invented some titles that sounded like what I wanted?
I went back to the chatbot and said, I can’t find these books anywhere, are you sure you didn’t invent them?
The AI said “…” for much longer than usual. Like, five minutes. In the meantime I texted a friend about all this and was like, is AI always this useless? Did I have too high expectations? And do they just make stuff up when they don’t have an answer? My friend said, “I can’t believe you’ve successfully crushed an AI’s will to live just by asking it to find books you haven’t already read.”
And then the AI came back to life and said, I didn’t invent them! These books are just quite obscure; better contact the author or publisher directly to find information about them.
Okay, but do you have the books’ ISBN?
The AI then gave up on lying, hung its head and said, I do not have these books’ ISBNs and have not been able to find them with any search engine. I tried Google, the publisher’s websites, Goodreads and other online platforms, and I can find no trace of these books anywhere.
At this point I felt like I was persecuting a poor, browbeaten algorithm, but I was a bit sad to learn that these cool-sounding titles were most likely imaginary, so I said “Why would you lie about this?” and the AI crashed. The answer I got was “An error has occurred; please try again later.”
…
Me: I’m going to go talk to a robot so I stop bothering my friends by constantly giving them & asking them for book recs!
The robot: Deactivates itself after talking about books with me for 5 minutes
