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AIs get better at maths if you tell them to pretend to be in Star Trek

Chatbots vary their answers depending on the exact wording used to prompt them, and now it seems that asking an AI to answer as if it were a Star Trek captain boosts its mathematical ability

By Chris Stokel-Walker

29 February 2024

Star Trek is playing a role in the strange new world of large language models

Album/Alamy

Instructing an AI chatbot to answer questions as if it were in the TV show Star Trek seems to improve its mathematical ability, although no one is exactly sure why.

Read more

Deepfakes are out of control – is it too late to stop them?

People who use chatbots like ChatGPT have already recognised that the quality of outputs can be improved by asking the AI to adopt a certain persona, or by bribing or threatening it. Rather…

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