Pedal History Is In Danger - ChatGPT Is Rewriting Fact — And It's Getting Worse

YouTube ^ | JHS Pedals

[cuz1961]

RT 39 m 14 e

I've been messing around with AI and guitar history for a while now... and honestly, I had to film this.

In this video, I sit down with ChatGPT and quiz it on guitar pedal history - the Tube Screamer, the Big Muff, the Maestro FZ-1, DOD, JHS, Jimi Hendrix's rig... the works. And what you're about to watch is kind of alarming. It hallucinates pedals that don't exist. It agrees with things I KNOW are wrong when I push back. It confidently states dates it can't actually source. And then when I ask it to prove anything... it can't.

But here's the part that really gets me: these aren't just random errors. There's a feedback loop happening. AI reads what's on the internet, people repost what AI tells them, and AI reads that too. So the misinformation compounds. In 40 years, when someone wants to know who actually designed the first fuzz pedal - or what year the DOD 250 came out - this is what they're going to find.

I'm not anti-AI. But I am pro-history. And if the people who actually know this stuff don't document it correctly, the "stochastic parrot" (look it up, it's a real term) is just going to keep filling in the gaps with plausible-sounding nonsense.

Names like Revas Hobbs and Bob Meyer deserve to be in the record. Not buried under a hallucination.

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TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: ai; ailies; chatgpt

[cuz1961]

This one's hilarious.

The AI straight up pulls crap out it's butt right off the bat

And when the guy pulls a fake fact out his butt the AI turns all yes man bullchiter.

Nothing AI can actually be trusted to be accurate or construed as "I" IMHO.

If that's not understood , AI will get fuzzy in its facts until all its facts aren't even facts anymore.

In a 100 years it will tell folks slavery was invented by George Washington in 1776 when the Bill of Rights was written.( Yes I know 1776 was the year the declaration of independence was written not the BOR /-)

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[Carry_Okie]

Truly disturbing that it went that far off the rails.

[pepsi_junkie]

Tell the AI right up front not to guess, not to speculate, if it doesn’t know something then ask or acknowledge that. cuts down on a lot of hallucinations. Then don’t stretch your chats out for loooooong sessions, keep each one short and focused or it starts forgetting things and making up stuff.

[butlerweave]

Even Microsoft says never trust AI for anything Important ,LOL

[rktman]

I asked a question and the AI response concerning “Artemis II” space mission and some launch details. AI was 100% wrong. And wouldn’t admit it. Also I don’t need AI inventing new pedals I might have to buy. 🎸😂👍

[aspasia]

There's a feedback loop happening. AI reads what's on the internet, people repost what AI tells them, and AI reads that too. So the misinformation compounds.

That's a Ginsburg on the supreme Court!

[Antoninus]

True story of how AI wasted a half hour of my life.

I was looking for a quote from St. Ambrose. Gemini had told me the quote was in a work called the Hexameron. I asked Gemini to find the quote for me, and it confidently said it was on the English version of the work on Archive.org, page 285.

I went to page 285, read the page, read the surrounding pages...no quote.

So I asked Gemini to check again. It said, “Sorry, I was wrong. The quote is on page 247.”

I went to page 247, read the page, read the surrounding pages...no quote.

This went on two more times before I said: “I think you are making stuff up.”

It said: “You are right to be skeptical. I did a really in depth search of the work. I think the problem is that the page numbers on the PDF don’t match up with the page numbers from the actual book. Therefore, I have determined without doubt that the quote is on page 189 of the PDF.”

Do you think it was on page 189? No, it was not.

I finally said: “I don’t think this quote exists in the Hexameron.”

Gemini said: “You’re right. It doesn’t.”

This kind of thing has happened more than once. More than twice. At present, I use AI for research in the same way I use Wikipedia. It may potentially be helpful in tracking down something obscure. But I don’t trust the result AT ALL unless I can see where it’s sourced from.

[MV=PY]

Sounds like you should collate the real history and write a book.

I watched the evolution of analog pedals from the beginning. I’d buy it.

[kawhill]

“In this video, I sit down with ChatGPT and quiz it on guitar pedal history”. It got confused with bicycle pedal history and Joe Biden

[cuz1961]

He did ask for very specific fact.

It failed.

Miserably.

[cuz1961]

Sounds like you should collate the real history and write a book.

( This guy has and is working on a another)
I watched the evolution of analog pedals from the beginning. I’d buy it.

( You watched all this vid already ? )

[pepsi_junkie]

He didn’t tell it not to speculate or guess though. It actually does make a difference, the AI is trained on what it’s trained on, if it’s not trained on details of a certain subject in depth, it will try to answer anyway ... unless you tell it to not guess. It’s not foolproof but it does cut down on hallucinations quite a bit. I’d rather it say ‘I don’t know that’ then make stuff up.

[T.B. Yoits]

"AI Chatbot Turns Out to Be 700 Engineers in India":

https://tech.co/news/ai-startup-chatbot-revealed-as-human-engineers

[NorthMountain]

Anybody who ever played with “ELIZA” should have been able to predict this outcome.

[Cronos]

“The AI straight up pulls crap out it’s butt right off the bat “

you are 100% correct.

“In a 100 years it will tell folks slavery was invented by George Washington in 1776 when the Bill of Rights was written”

As AI is only as good as the data it gets fed - if there are a lot of websites that say that, then that is what the AI will repeat.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Grok seems to get it right when I ask it "Give me a short history of guitar fuzz pedal."

Its answer included this gem: "In 1969, Electro-Harmonix released the Big Muff Pi, a smoother, sustain-heavy fuzz/distortion that became a staple for David Gilmour, Carlos Santana, and many others."

[rlmorel]

BFL

[OrangeHoof]

Put simply, before AI it was “garbage in, garbage out”. Computers had no opinions and drew no conclusions. Since AI now masticates on “news sites” and one-sided drivel (but I repeat myself), AI is garbage in, apply attitude, then garbage out. That’s all that’s changed.

[jeffc]

I used to play a Big Muff Pi back in the late '70's. Great fuzz box.

Now I use a Boss SD-1, sometimes a RAT clone.....

[NorthMountain]

garbageSquared = garbageIn * garbageAlgorithm;