Hacker News Reader

This seems unnecessarily pedantic. We know how the system works, we just use "hallucination" colloquially when the system produces wrong output.

View on HN

If the information it gives is wrong, but is grammatically correct, then the "AI" has fulfilled its purpose. So it isn't really "wrong output" because that is what the system was designed to do. The problem is when people use "AI" and expect it will produce truthful responses - it was never designed to do that.

You are preaching to the choir.

But the point is that everyone uses the phrase "hallucinations" and language is just how people use it. In this forum at least, I expect everyone to understand that it is simply the result of next token generation and not an edge case failure mode.

I would have thought to assume that, but given how many on HN throw about how LLM's can think, reason, understand I think it does bear clearly defining some of the terms used.

Other people do not, hence the danger and the responsibility of not giving them the wrong impression of what they're dealing with.

Sorry, I'm failing to see the danger of this choice of language? People who aren't really technical don't care about these nuances. It's not going to sway their opinion one way or another.

It promotes the view that LLM:s are minds.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com