Don't just do something, stand there! Reflections on the counterintuitive behavior of complex systems, seen through the eyes of System Dynamics, Systems Thinking and simulation.
I decided to try out a trickier problem on ChatGPT: epidemiology. This is tougher, because it requires some domain knowledge about terminology as well as some math. R0 itself is a slippery concept. It appears that ChatGPT is essentially equating R0 and the transmission rate; perhaps the result would be different had I used a … Continue reading “ChatGPT struggles with pandemics”
Continuing with the theme, I tried the department store problem out on ChatGPT. This is a common test of stock-flow reasoning, in which participants assess the peak stock of people in a store from data on the inflow and outflow. I posed a simplified version of the problem: Interestingly, I had intended to have 6 … Continue reading “ChatGPT and the Department Store Problem”
Research indicates that insights about stock-flow management don’t necessarily generalize from one situation to another. People can fill their bathtubs without comprehending the federal debt or COVID prevalence. ChatGPT struggles a bit with the climate bathtub, so I wondered if it could reason successfully about real bathtubs. The last sentence is a little tricky, but … Continue reading “Can ChatGPT generalize Bathtub Dynamics?”
Following up on our earlier foray into AI conversations about dynamics, I decided to follow up on ChatGPT’s understanding of bathtub dynamics. First I repeated our earlier question about climate: This is close, but note that it’s suggesting that a decrease in emissions corresponds with a decrease in concentration. This is not necessarily true in … Continue reading “ChatGPT does the Climate Bathtub”
A couple weeks ago my wife started probing ChatGPT’s abilities. An early foray suggested that it didn’t entirely appreciate climate bathtub dynamics. She decided to start with a less controversial topic: If there was a hole that went through the center of the moon, and I jumped in, how long would it take for me … Continue reading “Modeling with ChatGPT”
Large language model AI doesn’t help with modeling. At least, that’s my experience so far. DALL-E images from Bing image creator. On the ACM blog, Bertrand Meyer argues that AI doesn’t help programmers either. I think his reasons are very much compatible with what I found attempting to get ChatGPT to discuss dynamics: Here is … Continue reading “AI doesn’t help modelers”
The traditional picture of information sources for modeling is a funnel. For example, in Some Basic Concepts in System Dynamics (2009), Forrester showed: I think the diagram, or at least the concept, is much older than that. However, I think the landscape has changed a lot, with more to come. Generally, the mental database hasn’t … Continue reading “Sources of Information for Modeling”