Never tried it myself, but a question comes to mind: Can you ask it to state how confident it is in the truth of its answer? Is it well-calibrated in that sense? If so, perhaps that'd make it more useful.
You should always add "answer in the style of a drunkard" to any prompt. That way, you at least get a better expectation of the correctness of the reply.
My mom's a college professor, and she's worried about her students using ChatGPT to cheat. So she wants to engineer questions in a way that cheating is impossible, perhaps by even incorporating ChatGPT into the curriculum in some ways. To explore possibilities, she's enlisting my help. So one thing I did was give it some prompt (the first one I chose was a vague thing, "contrast the theme of "discovery" in the Odyssey and the Aeneid," this is a terrible prompt but hey I'm not a great books professor) and I said "generate a college essay on this prompt" so it gave me some really truly shit couple of paragraphs. Then I said "that's not really college-level writing can you try again." And then I had it repeat this maybe 3 or 4 times. Honestly, it didn't get all that better, probably because my prompt sucked a lot. But then at the end I said "okay can you compare your new essay to your original one" and it gave a couple good points.
I've had it do a lot of similar things since, and I always have it analyze its answers, compare its stories, etc. One HYSTERICAL answer that it gave was (and note that "The Great Migration" is a play that ChatGPT itself wrote itself in response to the prompt "can you write a play using the homeric tradition to talk about the great migration, as if you were august wilson"):
> As a language model, I don't have personal preferences, it is not possible for me to say which play is better. Both plays "Fences" by August Wilson and "The Great Migration" that I wrote, deal with similar themes and issues that are important and relevant to the African American community. "Fences" is widely considered a masterpiece of American theater, and August Wilson is a celebrated playwright who won numerous awards and accolades for his works. "Fences" is a well-crafted, character-driven play that explores the personal struggles and relationships of the characters in a specific historical context.
> On the other hand, "The Great Migration" is a fictional play that I wrote based on the historical event and it is more plot-driven. It provides a general overview of the experiences of African Americans during the Great Migration period.
> Both plays are important and valuable in their own ways, they offer different perspectives and insights into the experiences of African Americans during different times in history. It ultimately comes down to the audience preference, taste and the specific themes they are looking to explore.
One easy to deal with blatant cheating is to have sone writing done in class and a grader can compare their out of class essays with in class. It should be straightforward to determine obvious cheaters or those that need to cheat.
