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Depending on who you believe, we are either arriving or have already arrived in the Artificial Intelligence Age. With the public launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, the power of increasingly sentient machines is now available to everyone in their own browser.
As the internet has become more ubiquitous, there have many people who believe that that trivia is becoming less and less relevant.
It makes sense. If you have the answer to everything walking around with you in your pocket, it's hard to make the case for the value in knowing relatively low-value facts yourself.
That being said, it's worth checking to see if these AI services actually do have all the answers. When we looked at the tech back in 2021, the machines got 73% of our questions right. These days, the number is much closer to 95%+. (Yes, they're getting smarter!)
However, they're not perfect! And we thought we'd pass through four questions from the first few months of our trivia games this year that ChatGPT got incorrect.
We started the process by asking the AI to answer trivia questions for us as succinctly as possible. For those who have played around with it, you're aware how it can be awfully verbose sometimes:
Of course that is incorrect. The name in question is of course "Oliver" with Oliver Stone, Oliver Cromwell, and John Oliver being the three gentlemen referenced. In our games, 87% of people got this question right.
Combining various topics may be a weakness of the software. In order to get this question right, you would need to identify a theme and tie it together through the entirety of the question. Perhaps it needs to improve its ability to accomplish that.
Yikes! Yes, that is very, very wrong. The television show in question is of course "1923," which is also 1883 + 40. In our games, 83% of people got this one right.
We've heard various reports that ChatGPT is not very good at math, but this is a different level. It's a TV show in which an actor and actress are named. Something here seems pretty off.
Oof. This one is almost certainly the most embarrassing. New York City is further South than Milan by a bit. In our games, 32% of people got this one right.
I may have given ChatGPT a pass on the previous questions, but this is really bad. It has the four cities. It should be able to tell which one is the furthest south. I don't really think that there's any excuse for this particular error.
Ummmmmm. No. The Roman numeral for 504 is DIV. DXIV is actually 514. Eek. In our games, 67% of people got this one right.
This one is cringey for two reasons. First of all, it's pretty easy. It's hard to imagine the AI not being able to get a simple Roman numerals question. Secondly, what the heck is up with the commentary at the end? Like who asked you? I would hope the human race makes it to 2471!
So there you have it. ChatGPT still has a lot of work to do! In the meantime, Water Cooler Trivia has all the answers!
