What I don’t like about it is that it makes it sound more benign than it is. Which also points to who decided to use that term - AI promoters/proponents.
Comment on We have to stop ignoring AI’s hallucination problem
Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
I’m a bit annoyed at all the people being pedantic about the term hallucinate.
Programmers use preexisting concepts as allegory for computer concepts all the time.
Your file isn’t really a file, your desktop isn’t a desk, your recycling bin isn’t a recycling bin.
[Insert the entirety of Object Oriented Programming here]
Neural networks aren’t really neurons, genetic algorithms isn’t really genetics, and the LLM isn’t really hallucinating.
But it easily conveys what the bug is. It only personifies the LLM because the English language almost always personifies the subject. The moment you apply a verb on an object you imply it performed an action, unless you limit yourself to esoteric words/acronyms or you use several words to overexplain everytime.
abrinael@lemmy.world 5 months ago
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
The term “hallucination” has been used for years in AI/ML academia. I reading about AI hallucinations ten years ago when I was in college. The term was originally coined by researchers and mathematicians, not the snake oil salesman pushing AI today.
abrinael@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I had no idea about this. I studied neural networks briefly over 10 years ago, but hadn’t heard the term until the last year or two.
Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
In terms of LLM hallucination, it feels like the name very aptly describes the behavior and severity. It doesn’t downplay what’s happening because it’s generally accepted that having a source of information hallucinate is bad.
I feel like the alternatives would downplay the problem. A “glitch” is generic and common, “lying” is just inaccurate since that implies intent to deceive, and just being “wrong” doesn’t get accross how elaborately wrong an LLM can be.
Hallucination fits pretty well and is also pretty evocative. I doubt that AI promoters want to effectively call their product schizophrenic, which is what most people think when hearing hallucination.
Ultmately all the sciences are full of analogous names to make conversations easier, it’s not always marketing. No different than when physicists say particles have “spin” or “color” or that spacetime is a “fabric” or [insert entirety of String theory]…
abrinael@lemmy.world 5 months ago
After thinking about it more, I think the main issue I have with it is that it sort of anthropomorphises the AI, which is more of an issue in applications where you’re trying to convince the consumer that the product is actually intelligent.
You may be right that people could have a negative view of the word “hallucination”. I don’t personally think of schizophrenia, but I don’t know what the majority think of when they hear the word.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 5 months ago
You could invent a new word, but that doesn’t help people understand the problem.
You are looking for an existing word that describes providing unintentionally incorrect thoughts but is totally unrelated to humans. I suspect that word doesn’t exist. Every thinking word gets anthropomorphized.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 5 months ago
They’re nowadays using it to humanize neural networks, and thus oversell its capabilities.
calcopiritus@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s easily the worst problem if Lemmy. Sometimes one guy has an issue with something and suddenly the whole thread is about that thing, as if everyone thought about it. No, you didn’t think about it, you just read another person’s comment and made another one instead of replying to it.
I never heard anyone complain about the term “hallucination” for AIs, but suddenly in this one thread there are 100 clonic comments instead of a single upvoted ones.
I get it, you don’t like “hallucinate”, just upvote the existing comment about it and move on. If you have anything to add, reply to that comment.
I don’t know why this specific thing is so common on Lemmy though, I don’t think it happened in reddit.
emptiestplace@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
When you’re used to knowing a lot relative to the people around you, learning to listen sometimes becomes optional.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 5 months ago
“Hallucination” pretty well describes my opinion on AI generated “content”. I think all of their generation is a hallucination at best.
Garbage in, garbage out.