Today, (almost) not a technical content. While I’m using ChatGPT a lot to help doing my daily job, I wanted to give you an example on why you need double check the answers you get from the generative AI.
This example is about my apartment renovation project (a complete disaster in term of planing, project management… from the a big company). Anyway, I received today a letter from them giving me the compensation they would like me to agree for all the delay on this project. In France the law is very well done (:)) so we have a text telling this and I used it as an intro/to set the context of my ChatGPT request:
Selon la norme Afnor NF P 03-001 applicable aux chantiers privés et qui fait référence sur le sujet, elles s’élèvent quotidiennement, au minimum, à 1/1000e du prix du marché conclu avec votre client (dans la limite de 5% du montant total).
In English: According to the Afnor NF P 03-001 standard applicable to private construction site, which is the reference on the subject, they amount to at least 1/1000th of the contract price agreed with your customer (up to a maximum of 5% of the total amount).
ChatGPT acknowledged it with the following answer:
The translation in English
Afnor standard NF P 03-001, applicable to private construction sites, stipulates that penalties for late completion must amount to at least 1/1000th of the contract price agreed with the customer, up to a maximum of 5% of the total amount. This means that if a project falls behind schedule, penalties may be applied to the contractor responsible, in proportion to the initial contract amount and the accumulated delay. However, these penalties may not exceed 5% of the total contract amount.
I now wanted to know how many days of delay were corresponding to the 5% (easy task, no?), so I asked my best friend:
The answer is interesting…
To determine how much delay corresponds to 5% of the total amount, you can use the following formula
Delay = (5% x Total amount)/(1/1000)
This is equivalent to finding out how many days of delay are equivalent to 5% of the total amount. Using this formula, you can calculate the number of days late that would reach the maximum penalty threshold of 5%.
I was like “why the total amount in the formula”… so I decided to play with the AI:
Yes my best friend is telling me that I need to have a delay of almost 9272 years to get 5% back… Quite a lot 🙂 I tried to give ChatGPT a chance by telling it that it was “completely wrong”:
The answer is funny:
You’re right, I apologize for the error. The calculation I provided is incorrect. To find the number of days late corresponding to 5% of the total amount, we need to divide the total amount by the product of 1/1000 and 5%:
//// Same strange calculation 🙂
The number of days of delay corresponding to 5% of the total amount is 3384250. However, this result seems very high and unrealistic in the context of a construction project. Please allow me to re-examine the calculation.
“Unrealistic”… Yes for sure 🙂
So I helped the AI with a “Total amount has no impact on calculation”:
Finally a good answer:
You’re quite right, and I apologize for the confusion. In this case, the total amount is not necessary to calculate the number of days late corresponding to 5% of the total amount.
To determine the number of days late corresponding to 5% of the total amount, we need to divide 5% by 1/1000, as penalties are calculated as being equal to 1/1000th of the contract price agreed with the customer.
The correct calculation is therefore as follows:
////// Good calculation this time
Thus, 5% of the total amount corresponds to a delay of 50 days. Thank you for correcting me, and I’m sorry for the previous error.
Was just a quick post to show you how wrong generative AI can be, so please double check before using it!