News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by gwright on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @12:36PM (#36775271)
I think it confuses things immensely to anthropomorphize large language models. LLMs don't lie or tell the truth they just spit out text that is in alignment with the training model. Don't give them agency they don't have.
Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by homami on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @12:52PM (#36775548)
I don't lie either. I just spit out words that is in alignment with my mental model for optimizing my future.
Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by svaha1728 on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @01:14PM (#36775933)
“First you destroy those who create values. Then you destroy those who know what the values are…

But real barbarism begins when no one can any longer judge or know that what one does is barbaric.” — Ryszard Kapuściński

Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by gwright on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @01:27PM (#36776188)
Maybe you are a large language model?
Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by what-wait on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @01:03PM (#36775747)
Quoting someone on the internet, saying: 'They are just liquidating their assets.'

Their lies are simple: they rule us.

(-;

Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by ars on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @04:45PM (#36778829)
Are you aware that what you are saying is not true?

If you are aware then it's a "Lie". If you are not aware then it's a "Mistake".

LLM's are not aware, so saying "lie" is not correct.

Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by barbariangrunge on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @01:16PM (#36775967)
This is to fight back against the term "hallucinate" that everyone on here is using
Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by gwright on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @01:24PM (#36776134)
That is an interesting point. I'm not sure why, but "hallucinate" doesn't bother me as much as "lie". Maybe it is because of all the ancillary baggage that "lie" has related to our current culture wars (lies, misinformation, disinformation, gaslighting, etc.)

I just asked (another anthropomorphic verb) ChatGPT for a better word and it came up with "fabricate".

> The term "fabricate" could be used to describe AI's tendency to generate fictitious information. This term has less anthropomorphic connotations than "hallucinate" and directly refers to the creation or construction of something, which could be a suitable representation for what an AI system does when it generates false data. Other alternatives could be "synthesize" or "generate," depending on the specific context.

Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by JohnFen on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @02:31PM (#36777195)
"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.

Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by BoorishBears on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @02:44PM (#36777370)
It doesn't. Hallucination in this context means 'an unfounded or mistaken impression or notion'.

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...

Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by JohnFen on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @02:49PM (#36777447)
> It doesn't. Hallucination in this context means 'an unfounded or mistaken impression or notion'.

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.

Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by BoorishBears on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @12:06AM (#36782015)
The first sentence seems contradicted by the second no? If you don't have that fear then why bother playing around the semantics of "impression or notion"?

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.

Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by gwright on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @08:10AM (#36785024)
I think "fabricate" is much less aligned with cognition.

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".

Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by Karellen on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @04:23PM (#36778583)
I always thought that "confabulate" would have been the best word to describe what LLMs do:

> Confabulation is distinguished from lying as there is no intent to deceive and the person is unaware the information is false. Although individuals can present blatantly false information, confabulation can also seem to be coherent, internally consistent, and relatively normal.

> Can include autobiographical and non-personal information, such as historical facts, fairy-tales, or other aspects of semantic memory.

> The account can be fantastic or coherent.

> Both the premise and the details of the account can be false.

> The account is usually drawn from the patient's memory of actual experiences, including past and current thoughts.

> The patient is unaware of the accounts' distortions or inappropriateness, and is not concerned when errors are pointed out.

> There is no hidden motivation behind the account.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation#Description

Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by tsol on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @10:40PM (#36781512)
Confabulate is more of a neurological term so I think that's why it never caught on, but I've always thought that was the perfect word for what's happening
Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by SirMaster on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @09:49AM (#36786303)
What should I be calling the things that LLM's "make up" that simply don't exist?
Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by circuit10 on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @02:46PM (#36777408)
It’s a reasonable way to describe it. LLMs are designed to talk like humans so using human terms to describe them works quite well
Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by Barrin92 on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @09:28PM (#36781135)
it's also not a great term for the same behavior in humans. There's the often quoted distinction by Harry Frankfurt about lying, which is knowing the truth but intentionally subverting or hiding it, and bullshitting, which is talking without any regard to truth or falsehood whatsoever.

It's a distinction worth making as people are much better at spotting lies than they are at spotting bullshit. The bullshitter may even be accidentally correct. AI models in particular will make up things in random places where nobody is sceptical or has their guard up because they see no reason for a lie, but bullshitters don't need one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by constantcrying on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @06:18AM (#36784184)
Lying is intentional. A statement which is untrue is not by itself a lie, the thing which makes it a lie is the intention of the person.

AIs do not have intentions, the only thing in an AI is a statistical model of how likely words appear in certain contexts.

"Hallucinating" is a much better term, even though it still pretends a staristical model is akin to a human.

Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by circuit10 on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @07:00PM (#36794703)
I guess that’s true. LLMs don’t really have intentions but there are some AIs that take actions to achieve a goal that can probably be described as having intentions
Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by scarface_74 on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @03:26PM (#36777944)
Yes and when you’re using “serverless” services there are actually servers running somewhere. At this point, it’s not insightful for someone to mention either on HN.
Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by gwright on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @08:17AM (#36785106)
If we are going to expand the discussion to general inaccuracy in human communication we are going to need a much larger thread.

I do agree with you that "serverless" is a misnomer and not a useful technical term. I'm guessing the marketing team wasn't fond of "dynamically provisioned and auto-scaled pool of virtual machine instance-based services".

Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by scarface_74 on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @12:07PM (#36788690)
So then should we also get rid of terms like “bugs in code”, “viruses” as it relates to computers, etc?

In a technical forum, most people have the domain specific knowledge and the “well actually” is not actually needed.

Re:The plan is to flood Google search with AI garbage by verisimi on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @03:28PM (#36777976)
Absolutely. The lie is in providing the false framework, or a framework with fakery embedded. If the lie is accepted at the framework level, individuals will believe themselves to be saying the truth, unaware that they have already swallowed the large lie.