This guide is intended as a place to go to share ideas, strategies, and approaches to ChatGPT. This space is intended to highlight articles, books, podcasts, and videos to educate ourselves and others about ChatGPT and AI in general as it intersects with information literacy.
"GPT-4 is OpenAI’s most advanced system, producing safer and more useful responses. Following the research path from GPT, GPT-2, and GPT-3, our deep learning approach leverages more data and more computation to create increasingly sophisticated and capable language models."
- OpenAI
ChatGPT was trained on a body of text which allows it to generate text in response to a prompt. Some partial lists of the training dataset exist, and ChatGPT will also provide a partial list when queried. However, the entire body of text that has trained ChatGPT is unknown.
When ChatGPT provides an answer to a question, it will not immediately provide a reference for where the information came from. This is because it is pulling predictive language from a wide variety of places, so the information usually doesn't come from a single source. Because of this, you typically cannot trace the response back to a single parent source or know where the information came from.
Yes, when prompted, ChatGPT can provide references. However, these references may not be where the information actually came from and - more importantly - may not be for real sources. Despite sounding plausible, ChatGPT can easily hallucinate citations.
For example, ChatGPT provided this citation and summary in response to a prompt about needing an academic journal article on the topic of amphetamine use and social determinants of health:
"Here's an example of a peer-reviewed journal article on amphetamine abuse and its intersections with social determinants of health:
Stoové, M. A., Dietze, P. M., Jolley, D., Fry, C. L., Brewer, N., & Hellard, M. E. (2008). Increasing access to sterile injecting equipment and syringe exchange in a rural area with a high prevalence of bloodborne viruses. Australian Journal of Rural Health, 16(2), 99-106.
This article describes a study conducted in a rural area of Australia with a high prevalence of bloodborne viruses, including those associated with amphetamine use..." OpenAI. (2023, February 17). [ChatGPT response to a prompt about locating an academic journal article]. https://chat.openai.com/
Although the summary sounds plausible and the citation looks realistic, this article does not exist. The journal exists, as does the lead author. However, Stoové has not published in this journal.
As of 1 March 2023, the cutoff date for the data ChatGPT was trained on is September 2021. This means the tool has limited access to events and information more recent than that. ChatGPT is being updated regularly, so this may change. However, it is important to realize that the currency of the information provided by ChatGPT is lagging. This can impact information credibility, especially when dealing with a topic where the age of your information matters.
Here is ChatGPT's response to this topic on 1 March 2023:
"My knowledge cutoff date for training documents is 2021-09. This means that I was trained on a large corpus of text up to that point in time, and any information or events that occurred after that date may not be included in my knowledge base. However, I am constantly being updated and fine-tuned by my creators at OpenAI to improve my accuracy and relevance." OpenAI. (2023, March 1). [ChatGPT response to a prompt about its cutoff date for training documents]. https://chat.openai.com/
Source: Salt Lake Community College Library: ChatGPT and Information Literacy