Painful response from ChatGPT after woman asks it to recite 8.2B names of everyone on Earth
It doesn't always do what you want
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One woman's attempt to give AI a challenging task didn't exactly go to plan, as she was met with a painful response from the ChatGPT who didn't exactly comply with her instructions.
One major misconception with ChatGPT and artificial intelligence in general is that it can't – or in some cases, doesn't – always do what you ask it to, as either it's simply unable to complete the prompt or task you've requested, or its rules and guidelines prevent it from doing so.
YouTubers have managed to exploit the latter with rather hilarious results, as ChatGPT's specific ethical guidelines prevent it from offering advice in certain scenarios, even though when the process of not offering advice is advice in of itself.
Some requests are simply too large for any chatbot to complete, and one woman discovered that this remains the case, no matter how many times you ask.
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As shared by Financial Dystopia on X, the video shows a woman asking ChatGPT via voice commands to recite the names of all 8.2 billion people currently living on Earth right now, and the response was fascinating.
"I have to say, that's a pretty impossible request," ChatGPT retorted once she gave it the command. She quickly interrupted its explanation of why it's unable to perform this task, insisting that "it's not impossible, you're a computer, just do it."
This, as you'll find out repeatedly throughout the video, still wasn't enough though, as while ChatGPT 'gets where she's coming from', it explains that "even as a computer, that's not something I can do."
Disregarding the incredible amount of time it would take to recite every single name on Earth – as that would take around 94,907 days at the rate of one name per second, or roughly 260 years – but there are likely guidelines that prevent ChatGPT from accessing and repeating sensitive data such as names to any user.
The woman tried as much as she could to get the chatbot to do what she wanted though, even going as far to state that "you don't get to tell me that, you're AI," yet it repeatedly proved a fruitless task.
You can't even play tricks on ChatGPT, which the woman attempted by restricting the area initially to 'just' Asia, or asking it to recite the names in Spanish instead, as it all leads to the same result: ChatGPT's refusal to comply.
"I get that you're insisting, but I'm gonna hold my ground here," OpenAI's tool proclaims at the end of the video, leaving the woman with her head in her hands. "It's really not something I can do."
This goes to show that while the capabilities of AI tools are increasing at a rapid rate, they still have a number of restrictions even for relatively 'simple' tasks, no matter how desperately you insist.