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I agree and there is an enormous moral hazard to the latter. Just looking at what Hinton has been discussing post G, and you see ideological support for a narro

I agree and there is an enormous moral hazard to the latter. Just looking at what Hinton has been discussing post G, and you see ideological support for a narrow model, shameless anthropomorphization of LLM behavior, and downplaying of "hallucinations" (which I'd rather simply call what it is, which is lying). The moral hazard (for sure not new) is that those most equipped to call out the overplaying of the technology's abilities are also those most personally incented (via fame for their creation), or commercially incented (as you mentioned) to drive sales and hype.

HybridCurve 3y ago
> which I'd rather simply call what it is, which is lying I like the term "bullshitting" as it implies it acts like it knows, but doesn't. I can't stand it when they call it "hallucinating", as it instead might imply the problem is with the interpretation of the sensory input. This term might be more appropriate to describe adversarial attacks executed through information input.
- shanebellone 3y ago
  "which I'd rather simply call what it is, which is lying" "I like the term "bullshitting" as it implies it acts like it knows, but doesn't." It's not "lying" or "bullshitting". It's working as designed. It's not a repository of truth; just long-form autofill.
  - HybridCurve 3y ago
    It's not being sold as long-form autofill. It's being sold as something which will respond to queries, and there is an expectation that the information it replies with should have some accuracy. I am not in disagreement with your generalization of how it functions or that it lacks empirical knowledge. Some responses are accurate, some are not. It will always give a response but does not always produce a disclaimer saying that the response might have been inaccurate. So, in criticism of the existing nomenclature used to describe this phenomena (hallucination), I simply suggested something more appropriate.
    - shanebellone 3y ago
      I agree that it's being positioned deceptively. Today, it is just a novelty.
- kaycey2022 3y ago
  I think “malfunctioning” is the correct term you are looking for. Lying and Bullshitting and Hallucinating anthropomorphises the software. It is simply not functioning as advertised (not intended).
  - danaris 3y ago
    "Malfunctioning" isn't really accurate, either—because the common usage of that term isn't "not functioning as advertised", not in this world where salespeople will say literally anything to get someone to buy their product. It's "not functioning as designed". "Hallucinations" are 100% an LLM functioning as designed. They are every bit as valid as any other output. LLMs have no concept of truth, no model of the world, no way even in theory to determine the validity of any particular statement they output. The problem isn't the term "hallucinations", so much as it is the idea that anything they produce is not a hallucination.
sfpotter 3y ago
I totally agree with this. I like the term "criti-hype". To me, the NYT interview with Hinton seems so obviously calculated for this kind of effect. What is much more worrisome to me than any of the supposed abilities of recent ML models is the fact that the average person just... doesn't seem to pick up on this kind of thing. Although, I wouldn't personally say that it's "lying", "bullshitting", or anything else. That's just more anthropomorphization. It's "wrong" or "incorrect". A mathematical model, a clock, a map: these can all be "wrong" or "incorrect". You might say they were lying to you, but it would be for comedic effect. In this case, there are (again!) enough people who lack the ability to make the technical distinction that I think it's important we avoid any kind of anthropomorphization of any ML model to avoid confusion.
- yowlingcat 3y ago
  Maybe a more precise (albeit informal) term would be "freestyling" or "improvising" :)

HybridCurve 3y ago

> which I'd rather simply call what it is, which is lying I like the term "bullshitting" as it implies it acts like it knows, but doesn't. I can't stand it when they call it "hallucinating", as it instead might imply the problem is with the interpretation of the sensory input. This term might be more appropriate to describe adversarial attacks executed through information input.

shanebellone 3y ago
"which I'd rather simply call what it is, which is lying" "I like the term "bullshitting" as it implies it acts like it knows, but doesn't." It's not "lying" or "bullshitting". It's working as designed. It's not a repository of truth; just long-form autofill.
- HybridCurve 3y ago
  It's not being sold as long-form autofill. It's being sold as something which will respond to queries, and there is an expectation that the information it replies with should have some accuracy. I am not in disagreement with your generalization of how it functions or that it lacks empirical knowledge. Some responses are accurate, some are not. It will always give a response but does not always produce a disclaimer saying that the response might have been inaccurate. So, in criticism of the existing nomenclature used to describe this phenomena (hallucination), I simply suggested something more appropriate.
  - shanebellone 3y ago
    I agree that it's being positioned deceptively. Today, it is just a novelty.
kaycey2022 3y ago
I think “malfunctioning” is the correct term you are looking for. Lying and Bullshitting and Hallucinating anthropomorphises the software. It is simply not functioning as advertised (not intended).
- danaris 3y ago
  "Malfunctioning" isn't really accurate, either—because the common usage of that term isn't "not functioning as advertised", not in this world where salespeople will say literally anything to get someone to buy their product. It's "not functioning as designed". "Hallucinations" are 100% an LLM functioning as designed. They are every bit as valid as any other output. LLMs have no concept of truth, no model of the world, no way even in theory to determine the validity of any particular statement they output. The problem isn't the term "hallucinations", so much as it is the idea that anything they produce is not a hallucination.

sfpotter 3y ago

I totally agree with this. I like the term "criti-hype". To me, the NYT interview with Hinton seems so obviously calculated for this kind of effect. What is much more worrisome to me than any of the supposed abilities of recent ML models is the fact that the average person just... doesn't seem to pick up on this kind of thing. Although, I wouldn't personally say that it's "lying", "bullshitting", or anything else. That's just more anthropomorphization. It's "wrong" or "incorrect". A mathematical model, a clock, a map: these can all be "wrong" or "incorrect". You might say they were lying to you, but it would be for comedic effect. In this case, there are (again!) enough people who lack the ability to make the technical distinction that I think it's important we avoid any kind of anthropomorphization of any ML model to avoid confusion.

yowlingcat 3y ago
Maybe a more precise (albeit informal) term would be "freestyling" or "improvising" :)