ChatGPT is a so-called large language model. It's a system that has been taught to predict and generate the next word in a sentence. It is trained using a very large text corpus consisting of books, articles and websites.
I had a funny exchange with it:
Me:
What is wrong with the following sentence grammatically: "I was been singing"?
ChatGPT spits out an answer that is partly correct and partly utter nonsense:
There is nothing grammatically wrong with the sentence "I was been singing." However, it might not be considered idiomatic or standard English. The more common way to express this idea would be to say "I have been singing" or "I was singing." "I was been singing" could be interpreted as meaning that you were in the process of being changed into a singer, which is not likely what you intended to convey.
Me:
I'm sorry but "I was been singing" is completely wrong. "Been" is the past participle of the verb "to be". "Was" is an imperative form of the verb "to be". A past participle is always preceded by the auxiliary verb "to have" as in "have gone". You could also modify "I was been singing" by dropping the word "been" altogether to get a sentence that is grammatically correct.
ChatGPT replies in a humble tone:
I apologize for the error in my previous response. You are correct that "been" is the past participle of the verb "to be," and that it should be used with the auxiliary verb "to have," as in "I have been singing." The sentence "I was been singing" is not grammatically correct because "been" is not an auxiliary verb and cannot be used with "was" to form the past continuous tense. Instead, the past continuous tense is formed using the auxiliary verb "was" or "were" and the present participle of the main verb, which in this case is "singing." So a grammatically correct version of the sentence would be "I was singing."
It says it is sorry and basically regurgitates my response back to me. I
To make use of ChatGBT in its current iteration as a learning tool is somewhat dubious an idea because of the nonsensical answers it sometimes gives.
Can it learn?
Me:
Is the sentence "Harry was been cleaning all afternoon" grammatically correct?
ChatGPT:
No, the sentence "Harry was been cleaning all afternoon" is not grammatically correct. As I mentioned before, "been" is the past participle of the verb "to be," and it should be used with the auxiliary verb "to have," as in "Harry has been cleaning all afternoon." The past continuous tense is formed using the auxiliary verb "was" or "were" and the present participle of the main verb, which in this case is "cleaning." So a grammatically correct version of the sentence would be "Harry was cleaning all afternoon."
At least it remembers earlier conversations and seems to be able to learn from them.
Clearly, this technology has ways to go. You can't fully trust ChatGPT to give sound advice because it is capable of making such primitive mistakes. But this is really the beginning. It is guaranteed that these models are going to become better over time. So far, this is a language model that relies on written word alone. A system capable of learning from hands-on experimentation and interacting with a virtual world or the physical world could potentially become much more powerful.
