this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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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.
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.
Edit: it’s like all of the bills/acts in congress where they name them something like “The Protect Children Online Act” and you ask, “well, what does it do?” And they say something like, “it lets local police read all of your messages so they can look for any dangers to children.”
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.
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.
We were talking about when it was coined, not when you heard it first