As a philosopher, I am often asked about the nature of truth. What is truth? How do we know what is true? These are questions that have puzzled philosophers for centuries, and they continue to be the subject of intense debate and discussion.
Eric Schwitzgebel has gotten GPT-3 to write blog posts in his style, so I asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT to write a blog post in my style— prompted explicitly as “in the style of P.D. Magnus.” It led with the opening that I’ve quoted above, followed by descriptions of correspondence and coherence theories of truth.
When asked who P.D. Magnus is, however, it replies, “I’m sorry, but I am not familiar with a person named P.D. Magnus.” At least, most of the time. One prompt generated, “P.D. Magnus is a fictional character and does not exist in reality.”1
Continue reading “This robot confabulates like a human”