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People are vastly everestimating how unique this problem of hallucinations is. It seems to me it relies mostly on discounting just how much we've already had t

People are vastly everestimating how unique this problem of hallucinations is. It seems to me it relies mostly on discounting just how much we've already had to deal with this same problem in humans over the millenia. The problem of proliferation of bad information might be getting worse, but this isn't native to generative AI. The entire informational ecosystem has to deal with this. GPTs compound the issue, but as far as I can tell, no where near what social media has forced us to deal with.

BobaFloutist 3y ago
The thing is when you call a human on bullshit, they usually can't back it up well enough to pass the smell test. When you call an AI on bullshit it can instantly fabricate plausible, credible seeming sources/evidence. A human's lie is different than an AI's hallucination, since it's still based on (distorting) the truth, whereas the hallucination is based on an invented reality (yes I know it's applied statistics and there's no true model of the world in there, but it can report as if there is)
- ryanklee 3y ago
  Intelligent people can fill the void of ignorance with plausible sounding but factually incorrect information. They are apt to engage cognitive biases in such a way that the biases produce assertions that are deeply indistinquishable from factual assertions. They fool themselves in this way and they fool others. This happens all the time. LLMs are no different in this respect.
  - TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
    Sure people lie and spread misinformation (willingly or unwittingly). But coming up with plausible sounding lies take effort. LLMs on the other hand are amazing and prolific liars and can produce a lot of bullshit for a price that’s effectively free - in fact it’s cheaper to create a LLM that’s inaccurate than one that’s … less inaccurate. The truth to lie ratio on the internet is about to take a huge hit. LLMs really are a Pandora’s Box.
- gyudin 3y ago
  It’s not a big deal, there are many ways to handle it. It just has some overhead costs. LLMs that are offered to general public are more of a POC and they are making sure to use as little resources as possible.
- 127 3y ago
  Evidence can easily be cross referenced and if the link LLM gives is dead it means it's lying.
cscurmudgeon 3y ago
How do we know you are not hallucinating this comment?
wellthisisgreat 3y ago
Yeah if you think about it, there is no history for example, as all we have in that domain is just someone’s perspective on some events. They may or may not have agenda but that’s beside the point. That soft data could have never been trusted, rhe information that can be verified (calculations etc.) seems safe from LLM
blibble 3y ago
humans can only produce semi-convincing bullshit at a limited rate with AI this limit is all but removed all the human generated bullshit ever created will soon be dwarfed by what AI can vomit out in an hour
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- HappyDaoDude 3y ago
  Like most things in the world. The problem isn't necessarily the technology but the scale at which it is implemented.
- darkerside 3y ago
  How do you know that? A human that produced fully convincing bullshit would be definitionally undetectable to you
  - TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
    Because everyone has at least tried to lie - not necessarily for malicious reasons, e.g. white lies - a few times in their lives and know it’s not easy coming up with plausible sounding lies. It takes effort. Sure it might be effortless for some psychopaths but there are a limited number of such people. Overall the internet was surprisingly usable despite all the liars - even now with SEO and content farms; I think even SEOs realize that it’s better to provide information that’s true than lie if it cost them the same. LLMs changes all that. They can produce content on a massive scale that can drown out everything else. It doesn’t help the fact that more inaccurate LLMs are cheaper and easier to create and run - think about all the ChatGPT3 level LLMs vs ChatGPT4 level LLMs; guess which ones SEOs will gravitate towards.
    - darkerside 3y ago
      Again... > Because everyone has at least tried to lie - not necessarily for malicious reasons, e.g. white lies - a few times in their lives and know it’s not easy coming up with plausible sounding lies. How do you know that?
cleandreams 3y ago
Uh, no. Generative AI does not have a standard of truth. It generates text according to the probabilities given what it learned from its data set. There is no systematic modelling of a world that it can test its assertions against. What are called hallucinations are a fundamental property of the approach. The hallucinations are probable -- just not true. The model has succeeded but the assertions are false. This has to be understood or the models will mess stuff up. A lot of checking is required. Humans always assemble information according to a standard of truth. It is a big part of how humans learn. No method is perfect but the human method results in fewer routine hallucinations.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pixl97 3y ago
  A standard of truth is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Myself I would say we assemble information based on the limitations of the body we exist in. For example gravity is important to us because if we disobey its laws we may very well die. Embodiment and multi modal AI will likely provide such filters or limits to AI in which it can derive truth.
- ryanklee 3y ago
  > the human method results in fewer routine hallucinations. I'd love you to produce data to back this up. My guess is that you are wrong, on the basis of how often I discover that I'm full of shit and how often I discover other people are full of shit. Humans are built for being wrong just as much as being right. We wouldn't have such complicated institutions and social structures built around controlling for those symmetric capacities if it weren't the case. Even then, we find ourselves surrounded and overcome by falsehoods of our own design.
  - wavemode 3y ago
    You could probably just look up data on mental illness and/or pathological lying? Most people will say "I don't really know the details of that" rather than write you an essay of seemingly plausible but completely made up nonsense. Not all people, sure, but most.
gorwell 3y ago
If there's an upside here, it's that humans will now be forced to refine their BS detectors. In doing so the species would improve critical thinking skills which can be applied to all information regardless of source. Which, I agree, was often BS to begin with. But in theory would be more difficult to skirt on by without notice if humanity upgraded their critical thinking.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  Unfortunately that didn't happen with other innovations of misinformation at scale (such as social media) so I'm not so optimistic.
mvdtnz 3y ago
Not one single solitary soul has ever made the claim that misinformation didn't exist before AI so it's not clear who you're arguing with. People are rightly concerned about the scale of misinformation that AI is unlocking.
- ryanklee 3y ago
  I didn't say that they did. What I'm responding to is the strong tendency to discount our very long history of dealing with factually incorrect information and the ascertainment of truth from sources both dubious and trustworthy. Entire institutions are set up in order to handle these very real problems, the set of which currently dwarfs the problem of hallucinations in GPT. From a social perspective, non-GPT falsehoods are even more insidious, because we are inclined to trust and believe those whom we like and are like us. Again, people are in the habit of discounting just how much we are wrong in our everyday lives. The hallucinations therefore appear more singular than they actually are.

BobaFloutist 3y ago

The thing is when you call a human on bullshit, they usually can't back it up well enough to pass the smell test. When you call an AI on bullshit it can instantly fabricate plausible, credible seeming sources/evidence. A human's lie is different than an AI's hallucination, since it's still based on (distorting) the truth, whereas the hallucination is based on an invented reality (yes I know it's applied statistics and there's no true model of the world in there, but it can report as if there is)

ryanklee 3y ago
Intelligent people can fill the void of ignorance with plausible sounding but factually incorrect information. They are apt to engage cognitive biases in such a way that the biases produce assertions that are deeply indistinquishable from factual assertions. They fool themselves in this way and they fool others. This happens all the time. LLMs are no different in this respect.
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  Sure people lie and spread misinformation (willingly or unwittingly). But coming up with plausible sounding lies take effort. LLMs on the other hand are amazing and prolific liars and can produce a lot of bullshit for a price that’s effectively free - in fact it’s cheaper to create a LLM that’s inaccurate than one that’s … less inaccurate. The truth to lie ratio on the internet is about to take a huge hit. LLMs really are a Pandora’s Box.
gyudin 3y ago
It’s not a big deal, there are many ways to handle it. It just has some overhead costs. LLMs that are offered to general public are more of a POC and they are making sure to use as little resources as possible.
127 3y ago
Evidence can easily be cross referenced and if the link LLM gives is dead it means it's lying.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago

How do we know you are not hallucinating this comment?

wellthisisgreat 3y ago

Yeah if you think about it, there is no history for example, as all we have in that domain is just someone’s perspective on some events. They may or may not have agenda but that’s beside the point. That soft data could have never been trusted, rhe information that can be verified (calculations etc.) seems safe from LLM

blibble 3y ago

humans can only produce semi-convincing bullshit at a limited rate with AI this limit is all but removed all the human generated bullshit ever created will soon be dwarfed by what AI can vomit out in an hour

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
HappyDaoDude 3y ago
Like most things in the world. The problem isn't necessarily the technology but the scale at which it is implemented.
darkerside 3y ago
How do you know that? A human that produced fully convincing bullshit would be definitionally undetectable to you
- TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
  Because everyone has at least tried to lie - not necessarily for malicious reasons, e.g. white lies - a few times in their lives and know it’s not easy coming up with plausible sounding lies. It takes effort. Sure it might be effortless for some psychopaths but there are a limited number of such people. Overall the internet was surprisingly usable despite all the liars - even now with SEO and content farms; I think even SEOs realize that it’s better to provide information that’s true than lie if it cost them the same. LLMs changes all that. They can produce content on a massive scale that can drown out everything else. It doesn’t help the fact that more inaccurate LLMs are cheaper and easier to create and run - think about all the ChatGPT3 level LLMs vs ChatGPT4 level LLMs; guess which ones SEOs will gravitate towards.
  - darkerside 3y ago
    Again... > Because everyone has at least tried to lie - not necessarily for malicious reasons, e.g. white lies - a few times in their lives and know it’s not easy coming up with plausible sounding lies. How do you know that?

cleandreams 3y ago

Uh, no. Generative AI does not have a standard of truth. It generates text according to the probabilities given what it learned from its data set. There is no systematic modelling of a world that it can test its assertions against. What are called hallucinations are a fundamental property of the approach. The hallucinations are probable -- just not true. The model has succeeded but the assertions are false. This has to be understood or the models will mess stuff up. A lot of checking is required. Humans always assemble information according to a standard of truth. It is a big part of how humans learn. No method is perfect but the human method results in fewer routine hallucinations.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pixl97 3y ago
A standard of truth is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Myself I would say we assemble information based on the limitations of the body we exist in. For example gravity is important to us because if we disobey its laws we may very well die. Embodiment and multi modal AI will likely provide such filters or limits to AI in which it can derive truth.
ryanklee 3y ago
> the human method results in fewer routine hallucinations. I'd love you to produce data to back this up. My guess is that you are wrong, on the basis of how often I discover that I'm full of shit and how often I discover other people are full of shit. Humans are built for being wrong just as much as being right. We wouldn't have such complicated institutions and social structures built around controlling for those symmetric capacities if it weren't the case. Even then, we find ourselves surrounded and overcome by falsehoods of our own design.
- wavemode 3y ago
  You could probably just look up data on mental illness and/or pathological lying? Most people will say "I don't really know the details of that" rather than write you an essay of seemingly plausible but completely made up nonsense. Not all people, sure, but most.

gorwell 3y ago

If there's an upside here, it's that humans will now be forced to refine their BS detectors. In doing so the species would improve critical thinking skills which can be applied to all information regardless of source. Which, I agree, was often BS to begin with. But in theory would be more difficult to skirt on by without notice if humanity upgraded their critical thinking.

mvdtnz 3y ago
Unfortunately that didn't happen with other innovations of misinformation at scale (such as social media) so I'm not so optimistic.

mvdtnz 3y ago

Not one single solitary soul has ever made the claim that misinformation didn't exist before AI so it's not clear who you're arguing with. People are rightly concerned about the scale of misinformation that AI is unlocking.

ryanklee 3y ago
I didn't say that they did. What I'm responding to is the strong tendency to discount our very long history of dealing with factually incorrect information and the ascertainment of truth from sources both dubious and trustworthy. Entire institutions are set up in order to handle these very real problems, the set of which currently dwarfs the problem of hallucinations in GPT. From a social perspective, non-GPT falsehoods are even more insidious, because we are inclined to trust and believe those whom we like and are like us. Again, people are in the habit of discounting just how much we are wrong in our everyday lives. The hallucinations therefore appear more singular than they actually are.