this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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Technology
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I would call it generating unexpected useless and perhaps dangerous and misleading results. There is no motive like lying. There is no medical condition like hallucinations.
People already use "lying" when talking about other confusing inanimate objects/interfaces that don't have motivations (ignoring the motivations of their creators that may seep through). Examples:
"Google maps lied to me and I thought I was two blocks west of where I was."
"The fuel gauge says the tank is empty but that's a lie."
"These chip bags look full but it's all lies, they're just full of air."
It's harder to think of examples for "hallucinate", though people do describe things as " halluconatory" or "an acid trip" and so on.
I think even in world where everyone understood that LLM's do not think or understand, and where everyone understood how they generate their results, I think people would still talk like this.
I understand the frustration, but also it seems as tall an order to me as asking people not to personify their desktop computers and phones and other inanimate objects, or to not apply pronouns other than 'it' to stuffed animals and dolls. This kind of personification and personifying metaphoric language is one of those things humans are just inclined to so, however inconveniently in this case, imo.
I am really more worried about the researchers and the product people getting ahead of themselves on one hand and on the other people not understanding the huge limitations of these things at the moment. Essentially people not being skeptical when they use the tech.