Humans engage in confabulation but they’re mostly aware of it. In some mental disorders they may not be aware; though statistically that is not too significant and no, we normally don’t confabulate as much as the current crop of AI aka LLMs.
As a tool LLMs are fantastic and am glad to look at them as solely as powerful tools. AGI is not here yet and maybe that’s a good thing. Who would want some kind of artificial intelligence that is capable of understanding us, that is capable of using psychological tricks on people, that could have different goals than us and so on.
> Confabulators are usually unaware they are providing false information. They often display genuine surprise or confusion when evidence of facts contradicts their statements.
This is similar to LLMs actually. But it also seems like various "System 2" things like chain of thought could compensate for this issue in the LLM (and that possibly that is similar to how the brain works).
> Humans engage in confabulation but they’re mostly aware of it.
I'm not sure this is the case at all. Some awareness of this doesn't imply full awareness. In my experience, most people are unaware of how incoherent their worldviews are, so the distinction between normative and confabulatory behavior isn't clear.
As a tool LLMs are fantastic and am glad to look at them as solely as powerful tools. AGI is not here yet and maybe that’s a good thing. Who would want some kind of artificial intelligence that is capable of understanding us, that is capable of using psychological tricks on people, that could have different goals than us and so on.