I was just today trying to fix some errors in an old Linux kernel version 3.x.x .dts file for some old hardware, so that I could get a modern kernel to use it. ChatGPT seemed very helpful at first - and I was super impressed. I thought it was giving me great insight into why the old files were now producing errors … except the changes it proposed never actually fixed anything.
Eventually I read some actual documentation and realised it was just spouting very plausible sounding nonsense - and confident at it!
The same thing happened a year or so ago when I tried to get a much older ChatGPT to help me with with USB protocol problems in some microcontroller code. It just hallucinated APIs and protocol features that didn’t actually exist. I really expected more by now - but I now suspect it’ll just never be good at niche tasks (and these two things are not particularly niche compared to some).
For the best of both worlds make the LLM first 'read' the documentation, and then ask for help. Make a huge difference in the quality and relevance of the answers you get.
Eventually I read some actual documentation and realised it was just spouting very plausible sounding nonsense - and confident at it!
The same thing happened a year or so ago when I tried to get a much older ChatGPT to help me with with USB protocol problems in some microcontroller code. It just hallucinated APIs and protocol features that didn’t actually exist. I really expected more by now - but I now suspect it’ll just never be good at niche tasks (and these two things are not particularly niche compared to some).