Mignon Fogarty4d ago

I've never been opposed to the word "hallucinating" for describing how AI makes mistakes ... until now.

I just talked to someone who thought AI hallucinations would be obvious because it would be obvious if you talked to a *person* who was hallucinating.

In other words, they equated "hallucination" with "sounds wacko" and accepted AI output as true because it sounded level headed.

1/2

Show threadMignon Fogarty4d ago

The word "hallucination" isn't going away — it's a widely used industry term — but we need to explain it better for beginners:

"Hallucination" is just a fancy word for "confidently makes mistakes":

"Remember: AI hallucinates, and you need to confirm all facts" should be something like "Remember: AI confidently makes mistakes, and you need to confirm all facts" or "AI tells you things that are wrong in a way that sounds completely believable. Confirm all facts!"

Show threaddraNgNon4d ago

@grammargirl like when medical people call someone "confused", AI "hallucination" is a more precise term than common parlance. it basically means the bot couldn't find a plausible answer and is for some reason blocked from saying "I don't know", so it makes stuff up.

that's a bit different from "confidently makes mistakes" becuase it's "confidently making stuff up entirely".

I have no idea what would be a good replacement for "hallucinate" in this context, I agree that it feels deceptive as is though.

Show threadBen Aveling
I'm iffy on the term. But I don't have anything better.
But this: GenAI doesn't sometimes hallucinate. It always hallucinates. It only ever hallucinates.
Sometimes, what it hallucinates is plausible.
@draNgNon @grammargirl
Jun 6 at 9:13pmWeb
Show threadjosh buermann4d ago

@BenAveling @draNgNon @grammargirl

The AI is generating language from some matrix algebra that regurgitates transforms of the test data or mirages of it. Only users can hallucinate and believe the mirages are real while a whirring vortex of vectors can't believe in anything.