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by irrational 1055 days ago
Call them confabulations.

"Confabulation refers to the production or creation of false or erroneous memories without the intent to deceive, sometimes called 'honest lying'"

"Confabulation is the creation of false memories in the absence of intentions of deception. Individuals who confabulate have no recognition that the information being relayed to others is fabricated. Confabulating individuals are not intentionally being deceptive and sincerely believe the information they are communicating to be genuine and accurate."

https://clinmedjournals.org/articles/ijnn/international-jour...
1 comments
tremon 1055 days ago
The words confabulation and lie have the same problem when applied to the current state of "AI": they embody are certain level of intent; in the former case, the implication is that there was no intent to deceive, while a lie is the opposite. Still, they both imply intent, and for as far as I know nobody has been able to conclusively demonstrate intent on the part of a chatbot.

Hallucination doesn't require intent.

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JieJie 1054 days ago
I like "fabrication" because it correctly implies the data is being pulled from somewhere and assembled. It does not put a judgment on the initial data, nor on the assembled product.

It can take on a positive or negative meaning, depending on the context.

"ChatGPT fabricated an answer that was technically correct, but misleading," or "ChatGPT was able to fabricate an innovative solution that had eluded us."

Edit: And of course, everyone's favorite, "ChatGPT found guilty of fabricating case citations."

https://www.techspot.com/news/98860-chatgpt-found-guilty-fab...

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irrational 1055 days ago
Hallucinations are defined as “Perception of visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory experiences without an external stimulus and with a compelling sense of their reality, usually resulting from a mental disorder or as a response to a drug.”

That doesn’t sound like what AI/LLMs are doing, at all. There is no mental disorder or drugs causing then to output what we would consider to be false information. The machine is not perceiving anything without an external stimulus. Everything they generate is from the stimulus we have given it.

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