And Now, A ChatBot For All Your Aviation Questions - AVweb

News Discussion
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Fads and trends blow through the cyberverse like tumbleweeds in Texas and far be it from me to feign being above it all. So the hot new thing this month is ChatGPT which journalists are fooling with to grind out copy for The Bottomless Maw of Endless Content. ChatGPT has a potential connection to the entire universe, including aviation. So let’s take it for a spin.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/insider/and-now-a-chatbot-for-all-your-aviation-questions
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After asking a number of questions to https://chat.openai.com/ I feel fairly confident that the world is safe from the Terminator for now. ?

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This AI (Aka Actually Intelligent sentient human) thinks that it will be a long time before any machine will produce anything approaching the quality of the writing of the 2 Pauls…

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Perfect tool for autonomous eVTOL vaporware, on my side I’ll set my ReaderCommentBot…and then we can all go flying while the Bots leave us alone to chat among their preferred pronouns.

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You can poke fun all you want, but this has serious potential to be absolutely huge, in almost every aspect of life. It has already been fed enough information about computer programming that it’s capable of writing programs that do some pretty complex stuff, and that part of it will only get better and better. I suspect every aspect of it will, too, and in a few years, it is likely to be writing The Nall Report, for example.

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A blow-up doll for those who perceive reality through their phones.

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While you’re waiting for that more definitive determination Paul, take this opportunity to go out to the airport and give your 1940’s something Cub another hug.

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I agree - for a beta product this is a game changer, or least the clear potential that it demonstrates, which will almost certainly be matched or exceeded by Google, Microsoft, etc.

I’ve been feeding GPT with some of the most complex “tasks” that weren’t possible before, just to get a sense of how capable this public demonstration is.

“write an article about ethnic diversity and crime rates between Toronto Canada and Salt Lake City” which it creates impressive verbiage with sources & stats. Then “write it in Portuguese”, “write it in Japanese”, etc. When I asked it to write it in form of a poem in German, it told me to “slow down”. College essays have been altered in the 2 weeks this beta has come out, as well was other things we haven’t thought of, a similar disruption that libraries encountered when Google appeared.

“write a program in C# to calculate great circle distances between two different cities” - computer programming is intensive, burns out many, turns minds into mush. This accelerates that process dramatically.

“How do I calculate V1 in a small single engine airplane” - nobody does that, but it provides information on how the K factor is determined.

“Compare and contrast men’s aviation hobbies with attractive women as a poem in King James English” - silly exercise that shows its language processing capabilities.

There’s a website describing how immigrants can use Chat GPT to understand the immigration process, create the needed court documents (ordinarily performed by lawyers), and prepare the step-by-step process. (Adios, immigration lawyers)

How about a shot at the staffs of lawmakers?

“write a bill in legislative markup language establishing the need and a timeline for introducing biofuels in aviation”. Senior congressional staff & attorneys will pivot from writing this “priesthood” language themselves to comparing their proposals with those of ordinary citizens and defending the details of their own “code”. The “Peoples House”, indeed.

Google and Microsoft will have a competitive response in 2023, certainly. It will take more time for AI to seep into aviation, but remember, this demo is just 2 weeks old, and while it’s fairly easy to get it to provide erroneous information or wrong answers, this is just a glimpse of what’s possible.

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I note that Microsoft’s typing predictive feature is getting more and more ambitious, suggesting not just the word you start typing but often going several words ahead. Soon you’ll be able to read an incoming communication, dash off “Generate Reply + Negative + Politely” and go on to something else.

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As a software Developer (and inactive pilot) I am not that worried about Chart’s muscling in on either environment soon though were it to take over some jobs, lawyers would be a good start.

I also was curious about it’s judgement capability, but I started with giving it a current METAR for GSP when we were down to 400 ovc and 1.5 visibility. I asked what type of approach would it chose given that information (flying a Cessna 172) and it came back with “a visual approach” which didn’t seem correct. I prompted with would you use an ILS approach in a light plane and it still liked a visual. I’m not IFR rated, but it seems that visual was not right.

So, Chart is not perfect, I sure don’t want it making decisions and as far as coding is concerned, while it did beat @ 50% of programmers in a contest the coding problem was not that complex.

My biggest concern is that the more people turn to the “quick” answer, the less smart we become collectively. I am reminded of the SFO accident with (Asiana(?)) airlines where two fairly experienced pilots flew it into the breakwater at the end of the runway because they could not see, not had not flown a simple hand flown visual approach on a clear day. The company pushed using the software in the panels, preempting the software behind the eyes.

if it becomes too easy, it becomes less interesting, and while the ideal is to “free up humanity”, what do we do with all those freed up people? This is not a horse and buggy being replaced by a horse less carriage case as the buggy driver can learn to drive a car. This is removing the driver from both…I’d like to see if ChartGPT can solve that problem.

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I thought it did quite well with this one:

Q - What should I get my girlfriend for Christmas?

A - It can be challenging to think of the perfect gift for your girlfriend, especially at Christmas. Some ideas for gifts that your girlfriend might appreciate could include:

Something personal: Consider giving a gift that has personal meaning or that shows you have put thought into the present. This could be a piece of jewelry with a special design or a framed photo of the two of you.

An experience: If your girlfriend is someone who values experiences over material possessions, consider giving her an activity or event that you can enjoy together. This could be tickets to a concert or a cooking class.

A self-care gift: Consider giving your girlfriend something that will allow her to relax and take care of herself. This could be a spa gift basket, a massage, or a new piece of exercise equipment.

A thoughtful gesture: Sometimes, it’s the little things that mean the most. Consider making your girlfriend a special meal or doing something kind for her, such as running errands or doing a household task for her.

Ultimately, the most important thing is to choose a gift that is meaningful and shows your love and appreciation for your girlfriend. It may be helpful to think about your girlfriend’s interests and what she would appreciate most.

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But on asking it some other questions - it is also a bit like a politician - it doesn’t directly address THE answer. It slides around it with some “mealy mouthed” talk. :slight_smile:

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Great, the ability to get a responsible party on the line is going to get even harder.

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OK - Sorry - could not resist… :slight_smile:

Q - Who is Paul Bertorelli?

A - I’m sorry, but I don’t have any information about a person named Paul Bertorelli. It’s possible that you are thinking of a different person, or that Paul Bertorelli is a private individual who has not made a public impact or left a significant online presence. Without more context or information, I am unable to provide any additional information.

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and in the interests of fairness - yet again - I am mistaken for someone else…

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Q - Who is Graeme Smith?

A - Graeme Smith is a former South African cricketer who served as the captain of the South African national team from 2003 to 2014. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest captains in the history of cricket and is the only player to have captained his team in more than 100 Test matches.'…Smith retired from international cricket in 2014, but continues to play domestic cricket in South Africa and abroad. He is also a cricket commentator and has worked as a cricket analyst for various media outlets.

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This reminds me of the time a bunch of us firebomber pilots were sitting in the tanker base ready room waiting for a dispatch. One of the guys grabs his phone and declares he should call his girlfriend.

This predictably draws some unflattering comments from us so he yells “F**k Off! His phone then cheerfully pipes up with “Dialing Flight Ops” in a rather sexy female voice….

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I’ve often wondered when these AIs will approach handling all ATC tasks. Ingesting 10 years of ATC tapes, weather data, and traffic information, coupled with the amount of real-time data available, it’s easy to imagine an advanced ATC control system that is more AI than human. Many parts are already there like clearance generations and flow control. Soon the comms radio will have an ATC gender option (male, female, etc.), accent option (Southern, Mid-west, etc.), and speed control (student pilot, average, NY approach).

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Then, encode your preferences into your transponder, so in addition to listening for your callsign/reg, you can also/instead listen for your preferred voice gender/accent/speech rate to know ATC’s addressing you. Same voice gender/accent/speech rate ramp-to-ramp, too!

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From the ChatBot:

“It is not appropriate for me to provide specific safety advice for your flight, as I do not have access to current weather or other pertinent information. Additionally, I am not a certified aviation professional and do not have the necessary knowledge or expertise to assess the safety of your flight."

Does anyone else see “HAL” from 2001–A Space Odyssey" in these computer-generated responses? (“Open the pod bay doors, HAL”–“I’m sorry, Dave, I cannot do that.”) The film came out in 1968–nearly 55 years ago–and author Arthur C. Clarke wrote the predecessor “The Sentinel” in 1951–71 years ago. Sometimes, Life DOES imitate Art!

We can only hope that we do not cede total control to the computer!

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I find it interesting that they want you to give them your phone number before they’ll give you an account to use this “service”. Why on earth do they need your phone number? And a throw-away VOIP number won’t do. They check for that and refuse to accept it. They won’t even take a Google Voice number.

Why do you even need an account to use ChatGPT? Just put it up as a web page and let people make queries, like Google. This has spammer data collection written all over it. No thanks.

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"Why was the pilot who became lost always calm? Because they had a GPS!

Hit the snare drum. Then the hook. I do find it curious that the Assistant wasn’t troubled by inserting an awkward pronoun. Is it possible that language learning is somehow sensitive to vague political correctness? Bad as the joke is—and it’s awful—I would have used he, the slings and arrows of sexism be damned."

Actually, if the joke is a direct quote, the use of that pronoun works for me. The pilot was referred to as “the pilot”, with no hint of gender, so what other pronoun should it have used?

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And there are people that still, in present scientific conditions, believe that e-vtols can and will take passengers to their destinations without a pilot ???