Anatomy of a ChatGPT Response

Generative AI is the most hyped topic these days.

You'll see a lot of people saying things like: "GenAI is the future". Should we believe them? Or are those ideas better be discarded just like how Metaverse was hyped some years ago?

Programming seems to be a job at danger as it seems like ChatGPT can write code just like any other programmer. E.g. you can see it programming Flappy Bird with the help of a human here.

The truth is that ChatGPT is at its infancy when it comes to coding. And I'd like to higlight that with a recent coding task I gave to ChatGPT:

Coding request for ChatGPT

As a part of effort for another article, I asked ChatGPT to tell me how to determine the device (Desktop, mobile, etc.) of a visitor to my website. And it provided below response to me:

// Detecting device type
function detectDevice() {
    const isMobile = /iPhone|iPad|iPod|Android|Windows Phone/i.test(navigator.userAgent);
    const isTablet = /iPad|Android|Windows Phone/i.test(navigator.userAgent);
    
    if (isMobile) {
        return 'Mobile';
    } else if (isTablet) {
        return 'Tablet';
    } else {
        return 'Desktop';
    }
}

Average manager looks at this response and think, "Look, GenAI is writing code. This will make our programmers so much more efficient! YAY! "

But if you are visiting my website, then you should be thinking: "Not so easy..." It's not that straightforward.

Why?

Why ChatGPT sucks when it comes to coding

The thing is programming languages are much more strict than natural language when it comes to syntax.

E.g. you can greet someone in multiple ways in English:

• Hi!
• Hello!
• Howdy!
• Greetings!
• Wassup!

But there are only limited ways to achieve a desired objective in coding. If you want to write elegant, efficient code, there is usually ONE way. E.g. we call it the "Pythonic" way in Python.

Let's say you want add up 2 variables in Python. You can achieve this only in 2-3 ways in Python

1. Do it on the spot

a+b

2. Create a function for that purpose

def add(a,b):
    return a+b

3. Overkill: Create a class

class Numbers:
    def __init__(self, a, b):
        self.a = a
        self.b = b

    def add(self):
        return self.a + self.b


numbers = Numbers(10, 5)
numbers.add()

There are only 3 ways at most to do addition in Python. However there are 1000 ways to ask ChatGPT add 2 numbers:

• Add 5 and 10
• What is 5 + 10
• I have 10 eggs and 5 eggs. If I add them to the same basket how many do I have?
• ..

Bring it all together

So what's the issue with the response I got from ChatGPT?

Please take a look at the code provided by ChatGPT for 2-3 minutes and try to identify what's wrong with it.

You don't have to be a seasoned programmer, an average one will see that the conditions for "Mobile" encapsulates those of "Tablet". So there is no way a device will be tagged as Tablet using the code provided by ChatGPT.

This is only the syntax error.

There is more to be said when you look at code. E.g. you can ask whether "Android" and "Windows Phone" qualifies for Tablet. No!

Dumb ChatGPT. At least for now.

Conclusion

If you are a programmer, be at ease my friend, as your job is not going anywhere in the next 5 years.

Guarantee is only for the next 5 years though.

Happy hacking!