> There are plenty of people who cannot admit they don’t know something and will just spout bullshit. We call them “bullshitters”, not “liars.” > It’s importan

> There are plenty of people who cannot admit they don’t know something and will just spout bullshit. We call them “bullshitters”, not “liars.” > 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.