"Fabricate" has the same problem as "lie" and "hallucinate". All of those terms imply a cognition that isn't actually happening.
I think the best way to refer to these things is the more accurate "error". The LLM isn't lying, it's in error.
I think the best way to refer to these things is the more accurate "error". The LLM isn't lying, it's in error.
There's one side of the current zeitgeist that over-anthropomorphizes these models. But there's another side that seems to be terrified that LLMs could be anything resembling intelligent
Both sides are pretty emotion over facts though. A lot of their "human-like" behavior is emergent from things that don't work the same way in a humans... but we also don't understand cognition enough to then say there's no overlap between what LLMs are doing and what some part of our own thought process is like. If anything we have more studies that imply the opposite going back decades: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09266...
Correct. Which, as near as I can tell, isn't the correct characterization of what's happening with LLMs.
> But there's another side that seems to be terrified that LLMs could be anything resembling intelligent
I certainly have no such fear. I say that only to indicate that my biases are not of that sort.
Is it an unfounded or mistaken cluster of tokens which resemble an impression or notion then?
At the end of the day it's producing an output which systemically was intended to be accurate, but ended up not being accurate through a mistake in generation: That's a hallucination.
It is completely reasonable to say that "This machine fabricates widgets." or "This algorithm fabricates pseudo-random song lyrics." without being worried that the machine or the algorithm is exercising "cognition".