The internet is truly a weird place.

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Artificial Intelligence

Here lately it seems we are hearing a lot about artificial intelligence or AI on the internet, so what is AI?  To be totally honest with you, I struggled to define AI, so I figured I'd let IBM explain:

While a number of definitions of artificial intelligence (AI) have surfaced over the last few decades, John McCarthy offers the following definition in this 2004 paper (PDF, 106 KB) (link resides outside IBM), " It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable."

Online there are many ways to utilize AI, and one really popular way is ChatGPT.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT was created by a company called OpenAI, and they have created this artificial intelligence to basically chat and interact with people.  OpenAI says:

We’ve trained a model called ChatGPT which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests

 

Artificial Intelligence and Evansville

Being the curious person I am, I decided to open ChatGPT and have a conversation.  It's weird because it is almost like having a text conversation with a much more useful version of Siri (sorry Apple).  I can ask a question and ChatGPT will answer quickly, and fairly correctly.   I decided to test out ChatGPT's local knowledge and see how much AI knows about Evansville.

The question was simple "can you tell me 5 facts about Evansville?'

Here are the five "facts" ChatGPT gave me:

1. Evansville is known as the "River City" due to its location on the Ohio River.  It is the largest city in southern Indiana and the third-largest city in the state.

I think we can all agree that this one is pretty much correct.

2. The first Coca-Cola bottling plant in the world was established in Evansville in 1902.  The plant still stands today and has been converted into a museum showcasing the history of Coca-Cola.

Now, this fact was a bit of a wild card for me.  Is there a Coca-Cola museum in Evansville that I didn't know about?  I did some Googling and according to CocacolaUnited.com, the first bottling plant was in Chattanooga, Tennessee which is in fact, not Evansville.  To my knowledge, there is also no Coca-Cola museum in Evansville, but there is the World of Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta, which is also not Evansville.

3. Evansville is home to the University of Evansville, a private university that is well-known for its theater program.  The university's theater department has produced a number of successful Broadway actors and actresses over the years.

I checked out UE's website and they do have a great theater program, and from looking at their Alumni Snapshots page, it seems there are some graduates who went on to work for Broadway.  I was honestly surprised ChatGPT didn't bring up the Aces.

4. The city is home to the Evansville Otters, an independent minor league baseball team that plays in the Frontier League. The team plays its home games at Bosse Field, which is the third-oldest ballpark in the United States that is still in regular use.

This is all true! Including the fact about Bosse Field, which is the third oldest working ballpark in America right behind Fenway and Wrigley.

5. Evansville is known for its delicious food, including local specialties like brain sandwiches and fried chicken.  The city also has a thriving craft beer scene, with a number of local breweries producing high-quality beers.

This one is less "fact" and more opinion, I think everyone can agree that Evansville is known for brain sandwiches, but the fried chicken I'm not so sure.   I do like that our local brewery scene got a shout-out from ChatGPT!

As you can see, ChatGPT needs to freshen up its knowledge of Evansville a little bit. If you want to check out ChatGPT and see what all the AI fuss is about, you can find it here.