4 ms·

It’s too late. People already call it hallucination and confabulating sounds weird. The idea that you think you can reverse the trend with a HN post is interest

It’s too late. People already call it hallucination and confabulating sounds weird. The idea that you think you can reverse the trend with a HN post is interesting though.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
baq 3y ago
Language changes all the time, nothing is set in stone, and HN is one of the better places where this change can start happening. Media copycats will follow.
- danielbln 3y ago
  The question is, why? Yeah, confabulation might capture the phenomeon better, but no-one knows the word, it is not commonly used, compared to hallucination. And that is across languages: Russian: Hallucination: Галлюцинация (Gallyutsinatsiya) Confabulation: Конфабуляция (Konfabulyatsiya) German: Hallucination: Halluzination Confabulation: Konfabulation French: Hallucination: Hallucination Confabulation: Confabulation Spanish: Hallucination: Alucinación Confabulation: Confabulación Italian: Hallucination: Allucinazione Confabulation: Confabulazione Portuguese: Hallucination: Alucinação Confabulation: Confabulação If hallucination isn't a perfect fit, but everyone and their dog know roughly what it indicates in relation to LLMs then that's still better than forcing a word no-one ever uses to describe something slightly different but overall rather similar.
  - glandium 3y ago
    French also has affabulation, which means roughly the same thing (confabulation is actually defined as "affabulation in some severe pathological cases"), and is, AFAIK, commonly known.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  > Language changes all the time ...towards less complexity and redundancy. Scientifically accurate terms are called that because they're usually not part of everyday language. Hallucination is a much more common word and thus more self-explanatory to most people. For a random person AI confabulation sounds about as intuitive as flux capacitor.

It’s too late. People already call it hallucination and confabulating sounds weird. The idea that you think you can reverse the trend with a HN post is interesting though.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

baq 3y ago

Language changes all the time, nothing is set in stone, and HN is one of the better places where this change can start happening. Media copycats will follow.

danielbln 3y ago
The question is, why? Yeah, confabulation might capture the phenomeon better, but no-one knows the word, it is not commonly used, compared to hallucination. And that is across languages: Russian: Hallucination: Галлюцинация (Gallyutsinatsiya) Confabulation: Конфабуляция (Konfabulyatsiya) German: Hallucination: Halluzination Confabulation: Konfabulation French: Hallucination: Hallucination Confabulation: Confabulation Spanish: Hallucination: Alucinación Confabulation: Confabulación Italian: Hallucination: Allucinazione Confabulation: Confabulazione Portuguese: Hallucination: Alucinação Confabulation: Confabulação If hallucination isn't a perfect fit, but everyone and their dog know roughly what it indicates in relation to LLMs then that's still better than forcing a word no-one ever uses to describe something slightly different but overall rather similar.
- glandium 3y ago
  French also has affabulation, which means roughly the same thing (confabulation is actually defined as "affabulation in some severe pathological cases"), and is, AFAIK, commonly known.
alpaca128 3y ago
> Language changes all the time ...towards less complexity and redundancy. Scientifically accurate terms are called that because they're usually not part of everyday language. Hallucination is a much more common word and thus more self-explanatory to most people. For a random person AI confabulation sounds about as intuitive as flux capacitor.