Healthy humans generally have some internal model of the world against which they can judge what they're about to say. They can introspect and determine whether what they say is a guess or a statement of fact. LLMs can't.
Humans routinely misremember facts but are relatively certain those remembrances are correct.
That’s a form of minor, everyday hallucination.
If you engage in such thorough criticism and checking of every recalled fact as to eliminate that, you’ll crush your ability to synthesize or compose new content.
In a human, there is a distinction between "this is information I truly think I know, my intention is to state a true fact about the world" and "this is something I don't know so I made something up". That distinction doesn't exist in LLMs. The fact that humans can be mistaken is a completely different issue.
On office desks there were "In" boxes and "Out" boxes. You do not put "imagination" in "Out" boxes. What is put in "Out" boxes must be checked and stamped.
"Imagination" stays on the desk. You "imagine" that a plane could have eight wings, then you check if it is a good idea, and only then the output is decided.
> A challenge is that it’s not easy to limit hallucinations without also limiting imagination and synthesis.
> In humans.
True, but distinguishing reality from imagination is a cornerstone of mental health. And it's becoming apparent that the average person will take the confident spurious affirmations of LLMs as facts, which should call their mental health into question.