Now before you think I’m referencing something about the Universal Pictures movie “Creature from the Black Lagoon”, I’m not. This is my revelation I wish to pass on to my readers.

In a speech in 2002, Michael Crichton coined the term Gell-Mann amnesia effect to describe the phenomenon of experts reading articles within their fields of expertise and finding them to be error-ridden and full of misunderstanding, but seemingly forgetting those experiences when reading articles in the same publications written on topics outside of their fields of expertise, which they believe to be credible. He explained that he had chosen the name ironically, because he had once discussed the effect with physicist Murray Gell-Mann

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray Gell-Mann’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.”

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

So what is my two-bits to add to this? Go back and ready this story but when you see ‘newspaper’, substitute “A.I.”.

Now go to an A.I. system like ChatGPT and start questioning it about something you know is true. I am not talking about math problems. Try something that people call trivia like movie questions, and such. You will soon see that ChatGPT doesn’t know half of what it thinks it knows.

But if you don’t test it for yourself, you might assume that everything you hear and read with regard to A.I. is right…. It’s not!

Then there’s always what was said by Erwin Knoll

“Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.”