Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Inspired by this I tried using chatGPT

Here's another excerpt, this time from the novel "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway, that mentions the time 07:30:

"I woke up late in the morning. The sun was hot on my face, and I had a headache. I had been drunk the night before, but I remembered everything that had happened. I lay in bed for a while and listened to the sounds outside. There were birds singing in the trees and the sound of people walking on the street. I looked at my watch. It was 7:30. I got up and went to the window. The sky was blue and cloudless. It was going to be a hot day."




I tried this

Prompt: Using literary references. State a quote that mentions the current time 9:54pm.

Answer: One literary reference that mentions the current time of 9:54 pm is from the novel "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In Chapter 3, Nick Carraway, the narrator, says, "I looked at my watch and it was four o'clock. Gatsby's house was still empty when I left - the grass on his lawn had grown as long as mine own and the air was thick with the sounds of the summer. By 9:54 pm, when the guests began to arrive, the air was alive with chatter and laughter, and the lights from Gatsby's mansion spilled out onto the lawn, illuminating the darkness with a warm glow."

That quote doesn't exist in this version https://www.planetebook.com/free-ebooks/the-great-gatsby.pdf or this https://www.wsfcs.k12.nc.us/cms/lib/NC01001395/Centricity/Do... (I just googled great gatsby pdfs).

Am I missing it? Or is the quote made up?


ChatGPT just isn't the right tool for the job to find concrete information. LLMs hallucinate too readily. They have no knowledge, they're just running probabilities on what's the most likely response, and the most likely answer in its experience is rarely "uh idk."


Made up. Or, at least, synthesized from parts of the book.

The second sentence is lifted from the beginning of one of the most famous last pages in all of literature.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: