Inside ChatGPT: How well does it know famous South Australians?
With a popular artificial intelligence website given the tick for university and high school assignments, The Advertiser put its reporting skills to test. Find out how it did.
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If you ask an artificial intelligence chat bot, the Somerton Man mystery remains unsolved, Taylor Walker is a left-footer, Peter Malinauskas has been the Premier for the past four years and Erin Phillips never played football.
Last week, it was revealed South Australian universities would allow students to use artificial intelligence to prepare assignments, provided they could prove they had still undertaken research and properly referenced their sources.
Catholic schools joined in soon after, permitting the use of the popular website ChatGPT, a website capable of writing hundreds of words on a topic in just seconds based on a simple instruction, except for online exams and other tests.
With the rise in popularity and more educators getting on board, The Advertiser decided to put the website’s reporting skills to the test by asking it to write a news article on prominent South Australian people and things.
The results were hit and miss, and not just because the chatbot discloses its data “knowledge” ends in 2021.
When asked to write an article on South Australia’s famous Somerton Man mystery – finally identified after almost 80 years by an Adelaide academic and an American genealogist as Carl “Charles” Webb – the website wrote: “the case remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the 20th century”.
The website whipped up a mostly accurate profile on AFLW star Erin Phillips, but failed to mention her football career at all, instead focusing on her achievements on the basketball court.
Asked to write about SA politicians, ChatGPT wrote that Mr Malinauskas had served as Premier since 2018 and had been elected as Croydon MP in 2014, rather than 2022 and 2018.
The website also wrote that Opposition Leader David Speirs had been elected in December 2020 – while Steven Marshall was premier – and that he succeeded Mr Malinauskas, his political opponent, to take the Liberal Party’s top job.
In just seconds, the website wrote a mostly accurate article on South Australian Governor Frances Adamson, but appeared to mistake the year she was made a Companion of the Order of Australia as 2016, not 2021.
According to ChatGPT, former Adelaide Crows captain Taylor Walker is still the club’s leader despite having stepped down in 2019, and the forward’s booming kicks come off his left foot not his right.
It also awarded him best and fairest awards in 2012 and 2013 that he didn’t win.
However, ChatGPT’s knowledge of SA’s culinary treasures proved extensive, if not a little biased.
It labelled Farmers Union Iced Coffee a “loved and trusted brand among generations of Australians”, while the iconically South Australian Pie floater was referred to as a “unique delicacy that has become a staple” of Adelaide’s food culture.
Exactly how accurate the website’s article was, seemed to depend on how prominent the subject was.
With people, ChatGPT made more mistakes or missed out important information altogether, while with places or things it was able to be less specific, producing broader information.
But with the website approved for use in dozens of South Australian institutions and looking like it is here to stay, it will likely only improve.
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Originally published as Inside ChatGPT: How well does it know famous South Australians?
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