Choose your own producer…a revolutionary new concept 
So I run the query for natural wines + added “The wines should be available in the United States. The retail price of every wine should be below $80. The retail price of at least half of the wines should be below $30” It looks like ChatGPT run out of ideas.
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Very repetitive selections: COS, Dirty & Rowdy, Donkey & Goat, Lapierre, and Radikon repeated many times.
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Two big mistakes:
Sparkling Wines:
Azienda Agricola COS “Pithos Bianco” - $45
Marcel Lapierre “Raisins Gaulois” - $20 -
And at least one price that is very inaccurate
Cornelissen “Magma” - $60
For the people dismissing the quality of suggestions, think of what the state of the art for something like this was just 12 months ago, and compare it to now. Now consider what it might be like in 12 more months.
Honestly, I’m pretty blown away by the results.
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Yes, compare this list to a lot of suburban restaurant lists and hotel lists which are often controlled by one or two distributors and it’s really pretty good.
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Apparently Riesling is geeky!
On the original list 10 of the 20 white wines are rieslings.
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Was debating with my geek son how we could use it to help in the restaurant.
This blew my mind.
Please recommend a chateaunerf du pape for under $200 in a restaurant to match with steak
Certainly! Châteauneuf-du-Pape is a renowned wine region in France known for its rich and powerful red wines. Here’s a recommendation for a Châteauneuf-du-Pape that pairs well with steak and falls within your budget:
Domaine de la Janasse Châteauneuf-du-Pape
Domaine de la Janasse is a highly regarded producer in the region, known for crafting exceptional wines. Their Châteauneuf-du-Pape offers a perfect balance of fruit, spice, and structure, making it an excellent choice to complement a steak. It typically features
ripe dark fruit flavors, such as blackberry and plum, with hints of spices like black pepper and dried herbs. The wine’s full-bodied nature and velvety tannins provide a satisfying and elegant experience.
When dining at a restaurant, it’s always a good idea to check their wine list or consult the sommelier for the availability of specific wines. However, if Domaine de la Janasse Châteauneuf-du-Pape is not available, you can look for other reputable producers
from the region like Château de Beaucastel, Clos des Papes, or Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe.
Remember, vintages may vary, so it’s worth seeking advice from the restaurant’s staff to select a recent vintage that is drinking well. Enjoy your steak and Châteauneuf-du-Pape!
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I find this second list really impressive. Sure, it isn’t perfect, but this technology is still so new. Considering the price constraints, the sparkling section is particularly impressive.
Have you asked it about any complex subjects or concepts? I find it often does impressively well at explaining concepts and getting into quite a bit of detail. It will hallucinate some of the specifics (wrong authors for certain ideas, etc), but most of what it says is true, and it’s even insightful at times.
That said, I have noticed it doing significantly less well with some of the “safety” features they’ve been adding over the past couple of months.
Kent- I don’t know that the CdP list is that impressive. Those are producers you’d expect to see on any best-of list. Also, are Beaucastel and Vieux Telegraph equally suited to steak? They’re quite different styles.
Eventually, some AI developer will train their model on more wine data, and then the answers may get better. But, given the significant subjective element in wine preferences, the output may end up being incoherent when you pose more refined queries. If you train the system on wine publications and Berserkers, you’ll get a whole lot of contradictory info once you move away from things such as location, appellation and cepage. It’s not like asking who built the Channel Tunnel and when did it open.
Another way of putting it is, I wonder how AI will deal with issues that involve opinions.
Honestly, so far the AI software seems to be mostly a fail across the board (in my limited exposure). It reminds me of a student who knows 10% of the material and 90% of the lingo trying to bullshit his/her way through an exam.
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Bullseye 
That’s the reason various people call them Cliff Clavin.
If AI destroys us all, it will probably be for the wrong reason.
-Al
I think you have fairly unrealistic standards. For a large language model that has never sipped a glass of wine, I’d say it’s doing quite well at understanding the task and putting together a decently valid response. Imagine a teetotaler trying to put together a wine list based only on what they’ve read about what other people like.
I have no personal standards one way or another. I am assessing the operation of the current systems against the rather breathless hype we see in the popular press. Measured against that yardstick, what I have seen has been seriously unimpressive. The CHAT GPT is literally just making shit up.
I also measure the competence of the model against the threats it poses. I like the idea that the system may, at some point, be able to assimilate and use medical data to predict problems and suggest solutions. Doesn’t seem like we are anywhere close that yet. And the supposedly “geeky” wine list that includes a Ridge cab seems a little far from the mark.
OK. I tend not to read about technical stuff in the popular press since nuanced understanding is often hard to come by. Whether or not there exists breathless hype written by people that don’t even understand gradients or backpropagation seems fairly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
I do care much more about what these models are capable of given their training data and architecture. And, I’ll be real honest as somebody that follows this space, the progress with large language models in the past few years is pretty astonishing.
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The progress has been astonishing. From a technological standpoint, this is impressive. But in the words of Wall of Voodoo, “Then the old-timer pulled him close and said/ ‘you’ve come a long way I know./ you’ve got a longer drive ahead….’”
I’ve heard AI called “an automated bullshit generator”.
That sounds like a failure but the truth is a truly glib and effective automated bullshit generator would threaten a lot of jobs!
On the same thought, a friend of mine capitalized on the ubiquitous bullshit in our world:
I’ve heard AI called “an automated bullshit generator”.
That sounds like a failure but the truth is a truly glib and effective automated bullshit generator would threaten a lot of jobs!
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Agree with you both and love Neal’s analogy.
I’ve likened AI to many sales presentations I’ve sat through- the sales person knows the lingo, but has very little comprehension or technical competence.
Are you talking only about large language models, or ML/AI in general? Are you familiar with AlphaFold?