ChatGPT and the Control Valves
At a process facility I worked at we were trying to work out the cause of an upset operation. The problem had been going on for days. One of the technicians on that unit said, “The cause of the problem is that our control valves are manufactured by Company ABC, and everyone knows that those valves are no good”.
He was wrong ― the upset conditions were caused by something else entirely. The reason for his statement was that he had worked with valves from ABC in a previous job at another location, and those valves had indeed been unreliable. But they were not the cause of our problem.
So, I put the following question to ChatGPT.
How does ChatGPT handle the fact that people may provide it with information that is wrong?
The response was,
ChatGPT relies on the information available on the internet and the data it was trained on. It doesn't have the capability to verify the accuracy of information provided to it. If users provide incorrect or misleading information, ChatGPT may generate responses based on that input. It's important for users to critically evaluate the information they receive from ChatGPT and not rely solely on it for accuracy.
So, if we had added that operator’s statements to a data base on the internet, ChatGPT could have given us completely wrong advice with regard to our operational upset.
The more I look into ChatGPT, the more I come up with the following conclusions.
It provides thorough and useful answers to questions such as, ‘What is the most important management element in a process safety management program?’ However, those answers are not necessarily correct ― they are simply a well-informed opinion.
Its replies form the basis for a useful conversation with a human expert. But ChatGPT is not actually an expert.
In the process safety environment much of our information comes from people. The information that they provide could be inaccurate, as illustrated by the technician’s statements in the above scenario.
ChatGPT does not know how to handle irony, sarcasm, jokes or outright lies.
