I am writing my bachelor's thesis this semester, and...

I am writing my bachelor's thesis this semester, and I had some trouble finding good papers to cite. I decided to ask #ChatGPT about it.

Prompt: I am writing a bachelor's thesis and need help with the sources. The topic is X. Can you recommend me a couple of papers to cite?

ChatGPT: […] Here are a few that I think would be relevant: *four non-existent papers*.

This could be a failure, but as I was looking up non-existent papers, I stumbled upon some actually good ones. A win in my book 🤷🏻‍♂️

Like 11 Jan 2023 at 17:18 | Open on fosstodon.org

6 comments

Dieu

@kytta citing non-existent papers is a tried and often successful technique, though I suspect it may not conform to your standards and ethics.

11 Jan 2023 at 17:20 | Open on hespere.de

@kytta it's weird what ChatGPT "knows". It does not know citations, but it simultaneously knows about specific resources on topics

11 Jan 2023 at 17:39 | Open on universeodon.com

Nikita

@chellman it also knows how to write damn realistic titles :D

11 Jan 2023 at 18:05 | Open on fosstodon.org

11 Jan 2023 at 18:16 | Open on fosstodon.org

Ed Ross

@kytta
From my testing and what I've heard from others, I'm not sure it is capable of outputting actual citations.

Which leads to the long-winded humour of:
https://pastebin.com/Yipmcb01

11 Jan 2023 at 23:17 | Open on neurodifferent.me

@kytta non-existing references ("hallucination") is a known issue of #ChatGPT. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33841672

11 Jan 2023 at 23:41 | Open on kolektiva.social