From Elif Batuman’s experience with ChatGPT, it seems that artificial intelligence possesses one very human characteristic: a deep reluctance to confess to ignorance (Proust, ChatGPT and the case of the forgotten quote, 5 September).
Many, many times I have found that instead of simply and candidly replying “I don’t know” to my question, my human respondent will answer a nominally similar but significantly different question, often at great length.
Geoff Renshaw
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire
• It sounds like ChatGPT has been reading too much Kafka and Orwell, with all the ruthless reasonableness that an omnipotent state instrument can bring to bear on the citizen’s plight. When explanation becomes no more than a dialectic that favours unhelpful intransigence, we may as well all take to our beds and contemplate matters offline.
Tom Brown
Newbury, Berkshire
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