[rodoxcasta]

But, this isn't a bad ideia when you don't know even the basics? Because you wouldn't be able to separate genuine information to subtle or not so subtle hallucinations.

It's like generating code in a language that you know nothing about. You should check for bugs, but you can't.

[2devnull]

The first thing to learn is you can’t trust the internet. From that you’ll know not to trust gpt. If you are prone to trusting things blindly, without doing your own research or verification, you have far bigger problems than gpt “hallucinations” (frankly a terrible terminology).

[digging]

I find "hallucinations" to be pretty apt. What works better in your opinion?

[starfallg]

The neurological term for it is "Confabulation", which is a lot better than "Hallucination" as used in AI.

Confabulation is the unintended generation of false memories.

Hallucination is false perception.

Clearly, the phenomenon we are seeing with LLM researchers call Hallucination better fits Confabulation.

[szundi]

Sometimes it helps when the audience gets the meaning of a word. Confabulation is not really popular among non-native english speakers, I am sure.

[qup]

It's also not popular among native English speakers, I can assure you.

[digging]

I don't actually think either term is more precise than the other when we're talking about LLMs, which aren't human brains. It doesn't have either memory or perception in a way that we do.

[moomoo3000]

I think the horse had left the barn on this one.

[nborwankar]

“Confidently presented bullshit” is probably much more accurate. Added benefit no new vocabulary terms :-)

[jstarfish]

Lies. Bullshit. Con artistry.

It's not perceiving reality incorrectly, it's presenting wholesale fiction as fact both coherently and with absolute confidence. It even forges supporting documentation ad-hoc.

GPT is not a poor schizophrenic suffering from delusions or innocuous "hallucinations." It is the world's most advanced liar.

[windsignaling]

> Lies. Bullshit. Con artistry.

These are worse as they imply the thing generating the words knows the truth and purposely says something else.

An LLM is just doing next token prediction. It's a mathematical process. It's not trying to "hide" the truth from you.

[wingspar]

For me, hallucination is better.

Lies, BS, and Con artistry all require conscious motive and intent. Thats a bridge to far, for me, in ascribing ‘intelligence’ to these models.

Hallucination, to me, conveys ‘seeing things (facts) that are not there’. To the extent the models are ‘perceiving’, they ARE perceiving reality incorrectly. Granted, I expect many times it’s because the source of the model training data are, at best, just wrong or are lying.

[digging]

Those are very inaccurate descriptors. A lie is an intentional deception, which is impossible for GPT. It "believes" that it "knows" something about the world, which happens to have been made up wholesale by its "subconscious" (obviously I know it's not a human brain). That is pretty much a hallucination by definition, applied to a non-human "intelligence".

Besides,

> it's presenting wholesale fiction as fact both coherently and with absolute confidence

That is not in any way distinct from perceiving reality incorrectly. It is a symptom common to both skilled lying and hallucination.

[newswasboring]

In my opinion people are way more afraid of hallucinations than they should be. You are not asking it to solve world hunger, this is basically like asking it to summarize Wikipedia articles. At least with GPT4 it doesn't hallucinate on basic things. I am learning typescript with it, and it hasn't given me wrong answers to direct questions yet. If you are too worried about hallucinations use something like phind.com which will give some sources.

[hansvm]

Anyone can evaluate whether it's giving you a self-consistent set of statements, and the additional words it spits out are helpful for a traditional search for alternative sources.

IMO, so long as you're aware the information is often subtly wrong, it's not that different from, e.g., physics classes progressively lying to you less to allow your brain to build a framework to house the incoming ideas.

[babyshake]

I think of the good things to get a sense of with ChatGPT is the types of areas where it is most and least likely to confabulate. If I asked it for an ELI5 about key concepts relating to how LLMs work, I would be highly confident it would be accurate. When you start asking about truly esoteric topics, that's when it often starts completely making things up.

[vibrolax]

I like the term "confabulation". A hallucination is an artifact of an intoxicated or malfunctioning brain. In my experience, confabulation is a common occurrence in normal brains, and can occur without intention. It's why humans make such poor witnesses. It's how the brain fills in the blanks in its senses and experience.