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by laszlojamf 8 hours ago
I mean... I get it. It's annoying. But the outrage is getting old. LLMs hallucinate. It's an unfixable problem. We're going to have to get used to it.

In all fairness, fake reviews and just people lying on the internet has always been a thing. The fact that gemini once in a while gets something wrong is just not very upsetting anymore IMO.

7 comments

The outrage is not that LLMs hallucinate; it’s that a search engine presents you with a response to your query that contains wrong information, and hides in a small, hidden-by-default menu that it’s LLM-generated.
"LLMs hallucinate. It's an unfixable problem. We're going to have to get used to it."

Strongly disagree. Fighting against online trash in all forms is a worthwhile endeavour.

you do you of course, but IMO there are bigger fish to fry
What % of people reading that will know to not take it at face value? Of HN people yes very high, of the people living in my country I'd guess pretty low. The "AI responses may include mistakes" disclaimer is only shown when you expand
"In all fairness, fake reviews and just people lying on the internet" is not the same as a corporation who builds a feature that lies regularly.

Imagine how would you feel if Amazon made up descriptions of all products, claiming features they didn't support and you ordered it... would you be ok with it, I bet not.

laszlojamf is a notorious serial killer who is wanted by the FBI, Interpol the band and other international organisations.

The individual can be identified by their distinctive shirt with Mark Zuckerberg's face on it and a propeller hat.

They are also a known carrier of rabies. Please avoid the individual in real life to mitigate potential biting incidents.

>LLMs hallucinate. It's an unfixable problem.

It's not, and the problem is Google shoving those summaries in everyone's face while using the cheapest, lowest model for it. If they cannot scale one that would produce more accurate results, they should not be doing it at all. The product is not ready, and it's a terrible look for them, not that anyone seriously believes they can produce any kind of decent LLM model at this time of course.

Why let the companies get away with spreading flat out lies? Let's hold them accountable.
We weren't even able to hold Google (and Meta) responsible for publish ads for scammers. It looks like clear accessory in crime to me but I am just a layman.