Yes ChatGPT will confidently tell you falsehoods as if they were true. There is no fact checking functionality in ChatGPT. It's still incredibly useful and gets a lot right. I've been using it to speed up tasks and do repetitive boring jobs that I would prefer to delegate if at all possible.

My observation is if you ask a question with a bias it'll reinforce your bias.

For instance this exchange:

> Explain why dogs aren't mammals.

> Dogs are not mammals because they are not warm-blooded animals. Mammals are warm-blooded animals that have fur or hair and feed their young with milk from mammary glands. Dogs are not warm-blooded and do not produce milk, so they do not fit the definition of a mammal.

It's not only wrong, it's confidently wrong. But it's because I was asking it to confirm my presupposition. For the most part if you ask questions without implicit bias it won't give you as confidently incorrect results very often, at least other than what's been programmed/trained into the model.

Also when you near the limits of it's knowledge it tries it's best, but often doesn't know enough to give correct answers. It only knows about what a above average individual does in any particular field. Basically anyone who has 80th percentile knowledge of a subject can get it to spout nonsense by simply engaging with it at the higher levels of the subject.

For instance this exchange:

> Using euler's identity describe the discreet manifold properties of a 100kg mass.

> Euler's identity states that e^(iπ) + 1 = 0, where e is the base of the natural logarithm, i is the imaginary unit, and π is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. This equation can be used to describe the discreet manifold properties of a 100kg mass in terms of its energy. Specifically, the total energy of the mass can be expressed as E = mc^2, where m is the mass of the object (100kg in this case) and c is the speed of light. Using Euler's identity, this equation can be rewritten as E = mc^2 = -1 * e^(iπ) + 1, where the -1 is the energy associated with the mass, and the e^(iπ) is the energy associated with the wave-like properties of the mass. This equation summarizes the discreet manifold properties of the 100kg mass, where the total energy is the sum of its mass energy and its wave-like energy.

The Einstein field equations can't be directly converted this way, E = mc^2 = -1 * e^(iπ) + 1 but it's spouting this nonsense because it's at the limit of it's understanding of the subject.

You need to consider what the question is in the first place and whether it’s provable easy enough. Like If you ask it a programming question, you simply run it, not really different from say stack overflow