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
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!"
@grammargirl
I think of this as the nines imbalance.
In a datacenter there is talk of nines of uptime. Going from two nines (99%) uptime to three nines (99.9%) requires an order of magnitude investment. Another again for four nines (99.99%).
The AI nines imbalance is that
It is one nine accurate (90%)
but four nines eloquent (99.99%)
Mignon Fogarty
Den of Earth