Can you answer this? ChatGPT couldn't.

[Kevin Kirton]

Interesting time to be alive. Where will AI and chatGPT take us?

I asked chatGPT this:

What Roman letter still in use in English linguistically intersects the concept of a fence in an ancient middle eastern language and lewdness in modern Japanese?

I won't paste its answer, because I think it's very wrong. It said "T" from Aramaic and that T is pronounced "chi" in Japanese and can "also refer to lewdness or vulgarity, especially in slang or informal language". Can it?

I assumed my original question was not formed well enough, so I simplified it to:

What English letter means lewdness in Japanese?

That should be pretty easy I thought, but it replied "In Japanese, the letter that is associated with lewdness is not an English letter, but a Japanese syllable. The syllable is "チ" (chi), which is a combination of the English letters "c" and "h". "

Wrong, wrong, and wrong, right?

I also tried:

What letter of the English alphabet originally derives from a symbol for a fence?

Again, it answered almost nonsensically "T" whereas the evidence is overwhelmingly for "H".

This seems important, the difference between asking a human translator/researcher about their level of confidence in an answer and the absence of this with current AI.

[Motohiro Kojima]

Kevin Kirton様

It's very interesting.
ChatGPTは、平然と嘘をつきますね（笑）。なぜTにこだわるのでしょうね？

私が子供だった60年代、すでに「H（エッチ）」を使っていました。
「おまえ、Hな奴だなぁ！」「わぁ、Hな写真だ！」など。

なぜHを使うのか知らなかったのですが、今調べてみると、
変態（Hentai = kinky?）の頭文字であるHだという説がありました。

2023.03.12 09:56:03
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小島基弘 <mthr...@imoduru.net>

[Fred Uleman]

Today's trivia:

About the same time as 小島さん was hearing and perhaps using "H" for 変態, we also had the expression "eight man" (H being the 8th letter of the alphabet) meaning the same thing but without actually calling someone H.

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Fred Uleman