Carrie ShanafeltLast night, one of my students thought he had read a specific poem by a poet we're about to read, but I didn't recognize his description of the content of the poem. So he opens up Google and types in the poet's name and the topic, and it just spat out a fabricated poem in her style. This is what's really unnerving--"AI" is not adding value to a search service that works; it's flooding the search results with so much crap that you can't even verify a date or the existence of a text anymore.
Jon Het.@carrideen I feel this will change over time, but if it doesn't change rapidly, we may have intrenched garbage that is hard to remove. Humans do the same thing, make stuff up and attribute it to Mark Twain or Abe Lincoln. WE do it with politicians all the time... Remember the quote from trump saying if he were to run for office he would run as a republican because they are easier to fool?? Or Hillary laughing at rape victims??? We don't need AI to lie. And we don't need AI to be fooled.
Scott Brim@Jon_Kramer @carrideen IMHO the problem is the audience for consumer "AI". How much do the great majority care if a poem is made up? They want something they can pull out in a friends group. Google et al give them what brings them back. How many pithy aphorisms from Einstein and Chief Seattle were floating around before consumer AI? 🙂
@scottbrim @carrideen I feel the major paying AI consumer has one interest, accuracy of results. People will not be willing, except for zealots of any flavor, to pay for lies or fabrications.
@Jon_Kramer @carrideen Why do you think many of them are inclined to make stuff up?
Cecelia@scottbrim @Jon_Kramer @carrideen If the output of the LLM is based on statistics: if one text contains the right answer and three texts contain the same wrong answer, it seems likely it’ll go with the wrong answer.
@helianthropy @scottbrim @carrideen I don't think it is that simple. That would be fine for an "sources say that..." answer, but would not be the case for "According to Babbitt v Harris 1976, Michigan civil court..." where there was no Babbitt case... Where the case was fabricated from no sources at all.