I agree and think there probably is a missing term in our language for the phenomenon we are observing, but it feels like splitting hairs to say the LLM is merely bulshitting and not lying. For the average person dealing with ChatGPT this distinction won't matter, and saying ChatGPT sometimes "lies" more clearly communicates the possible negative downside of its answer than saying it sometimes "bullshits" (especially for low literacy or non-native speakers).
I mean, isn't bullshitting still a kind of lie? It's an implicit lie that one is qualified and intends to speak the truth. Certainly it is a kind of deception about one's qualifications, even if that is self-deception. It seems like we are just arguing about shades of gray when it's unclear why that matters.
> It’s important because of motive. A lie is told with intent to conceal a known truth. It’s not just LLM agency that’s in question, it’s human malice.
That is not a distinction that matters to me with humans or AI. "Bullshitting" is just a specific form of lying. "Lying" doesn't imply malice to me. But a lack of malice is fairly irrelevant: mostly when people say they didn't intend any harm by lying, it's true, but it's just a way to minimize the fact that they lied. Intent is not as important as you seem to think it is: intent has little to do with how much harm is caused by a lie.
Intent is particularly irrelevant with AI, because AI doesn't have intent. Contrary to your statement, LLM agency isn't in question: we know AI does not have agency.
> Co-opting the term “lie” is a rhetorical tool used to shift the conversation from “this person/LLM is saying things that aren’t true” to “this person/LLM is acting maliciously and needs to be punished/sanctioned”
That's a pretty big leap. I'm not saying that AI should be punished or sanctioned. In fact, I'm not even sure what it would mean to "punish" something that can't experience suffering. What I want isn't to punish/sanction AI, what I want is for people to not trust AI.
It’s important because of motive. A lie is told with intent to conceal a known truth. It’s not just LLM agency that’s in question, it’s human malice.
Co-opting the term “lie” is a rhetorical tool used to shift the conversation from “this person/LLM is saying things that aren’t true” to “this person/LLM is acting maliciously and needs to be punished/sanctioned”
All I want is an honest conversation. It’s more than a little ironic that many humans are themselves being less than honest (and sometimes just bullshitting!) about the context when LLMs produce false statements.