“These language programs do write some “new” things—they’re called “hallucinations,” but they could also be described as lies. Similar to how autocorrect is ducking terrible at getting single letters right, these models mess up entire sentences and paragraphs.”
“Lies” assumes an intelligence; subterfuge. It is anthropomorphizing software and its bugs.
The proper term is bug. When I write code and it delivers the incorrect response, that is a bug.
We need to stop with incorrect and factually flawed terms — ChatGPT doesn’t have hallucinations, it has incorrect and erroneous responses.
Bard for example, couldn’t nail how many indictments there were under the Clinton Administration. How many were convicted? Throw of the dice seems to be Bards way of solving it.
These aren’t lies, they are bugs. They are fundamental to the FAILURE of the system as a whole.
These bugs would be inexcusable in any other REAL software industry.
This is just historical and political misinformation. What happens when people go to AI for recipes and get food poisoning? What happens when they ask it for health information and make themselves sick? What happens when they treat it as a counselor and become suicidal?
Nobody's taking any responsibility for what the machines spit out. Yet the AI itself cannot be held responsible for anything.
These systems are inherently flawed, fundamentally untrustworthy and the bugs are ignored in favor of “oh, look, it’s like a human being” — oh, no it is not.
We need to stop pretending that this is “AI”. It is not.
@DavidSalo @Alfred
Perhaps “AI” is suffering from economic anxiety and that is why its performance is so poor? 🤣