ChatGPT predicts the future when you use this clever prompt
Baylor University Department of Economics researchers experimented with ChatGPT to test its ability to predict future events. Their clever prompting approach bypassed OpenAI’s guardrails and delivered surprisingly accurate results. AI models are by nature predictive engines. ChatGPT uses this predictive ability to make the best guess at the next word it should output in response to your prompt. Could this predictive ability be extended to forecast real-world events ? In the experiment outlined in their paper , Pham Hoang Van and Scott Cunningham tested ChatGPT’s ability to do just that. They prompted ChatGPT-3.5 and ChatGPT-4 by asking the models about events that happened in 2022. The model versions they used only had training data up to September 2021, so they were actually asking the models to look into “the future” because they had no knowledge of events beyond their training data