So the verb is "bullshitting" which does an even worse job of avoiding anthropomorphizing or attributing sentience to the model. At least "hallucinating" isn't done with conscious effort; "bullshitting" implies effort.
Frankfurt's use of bullshit is what has always came to my mind also but you make an excellent point.
I think we really need a new word for this process because it really is just not comparable to anything previously.
Unfortunately, "hallucinate" is a horse that has left the barn with seemingly no possible way of replacing the horse at this point.
Re:GPTs and Hallucination
by empthought on Thursday September 12, 2024 @05:20PM
(#41525713)
It's a computer bullshitting, the same way as a computer calculating is comparable to a human calculating unaided by a computer.
Re:GPTs and Hallucination
by empthought on Thursday September 12, 2024 @05:19PM
(#41525693)
No, it ascribes accountability to the humans who employ a bullshitting machine to bullshit more effectively. It doesn't anthropomorphize anything, any more than "calculating" anthropomorphizes a computer doing arithmetic.
If you can ascribe accountability of "bullshitting" or "calculating" to the human who's using the machine then there's exactly no reason "thinking" or "writing" can't be ascribed to the human who's using the machine. There's no obvious line where the semantics of some words should or should not apply to a machine for behaviors that (up until recently) only applied to humans.
"What is wrong with a counterfeit is not what it is like, but how it was made. This points to a similar and fundamental aspect of the essential nature of bullshit: although it is produced without concern with the truth, it need not be false. The bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong."
Both "hallucinations" and valuable output are produced by exactly the same process: bullshitting. LLMs do for bullshitting what computers do for arithmetic.