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Bullshitting implies knowing that you're lying. Some sort of malice or intention to deceive. Hallucinating means the LLM really "thinks" that you can use PVA g

Bullshitting implies knowing that you're lying. Some sort of malice or intention to deceive. Hallucinating means the LLM really "thinks" that you can use PVA glue in a pizza recipe. It's not trying to screw you over. It's just that the token generator has found a weird path through the training set. (I'm sure I didn't word that last sentence correctly) I think "hallucinate" is a spot-on description of what's happening under the hood.

jp57 2y ago
I don't think people use "bullshitting" interchangably with "lying". I'm partial to this characterization: So bullshitting isn’t just nonsense. It’s constructed in order to appear meaningful, though on closer examination, it isn’t. And bullshit isn’t the same as lying. A liar knows the truth but makes statements deliberately intended to sell people on falsehoods. bullshitters, in contrast, aren’t concerned about what’s true or not, so much as they’re trying to appear as if they know what they’re talking about. ... [W]hen people speak from a position of disproportionate confidence about their knowledge relative to what little they actually know, bullshit is often the result. [1] Doesn't this description like what LLMs do all the time? [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/202007/the-psychology-bullshit https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/202007/...
- function_seven 2y ago
  Yeah I missed the nuance on the other side. If I know 80% of a subject, I can sometimes convince myself that I'm capable of "filling in the gaps" with on-the-fly constructions. But because "bullshitting" has some sorta agency behind it, while "hallucinating" is a thing that happens to you, I still lean toward the latter. But even better are the other replies that suggest "confabulation." "Hallucination" just sounds so nicely dystopian as we start to think about our coming AI overlords.
DonaldFisk 2y ago
> Bullshitting implies knowing that you're lying. Harry Frankfurt had a more useful definition of bullshitting. The essence of it is that while liars care about the truth and intend to deceive, bullshitters don't know or care about the truth - they want to impress, or avoid looking stupid, or something similar. Hallucination is clearly the wrong word here, as is lying. Bullshitting isn't much better. Confabulation, however, is very close to what LLMs are doing when they make up stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation
iknownthing 2y ago
How about just "misprediction"?

jp57 2y ago

I don't think people use "bullshitting" interchangably with "lying". I'm partial to this characterization: So bullshitting isn’t just nonsense. It’s constructed in order to appear meaningful, though on closer examination, it isn’t. And bullshit isn’t the same as lying. A liar knows the truth but makes statements deliberately intended to sell people on falsehoods. bullshitters, in contrast, aren’t concerned about what’s true or not, so much as they’re trying to appear as if they know what they’re talking about. ... [W]hen people speak from a position of disproportionate confidence about their knowledge relative to what little they actually know, bullshit is often the result. [1] Doesn't this description like what LLMs do all the time? [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/202007/the-psychology-bullshit https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/202007/...

function_seven 2y ago
Yeah I missed the nuance on the other side. If I know 80% of a subject, I can sometimes convince myself that I'm capable of "filling in the gaps" with on-the-fly constructions. But because "bullshitting" has some sorta agency behind it, while "hallucinating" is a thing that happens to you, I still lean toward the latter. But even better are the other replies that suggest "confabulation." "Hallucination" just sounds so nicely dystopian as we start to think about our coming AI overlords.

DonaldFisk 2y ago

> Bullshitting implies knowing that you're lying. Harry Frankfurt had a more useful definition of bullshitting. The essence of it is that while liars care about the truth and intend to deceive, bullshitters don't know or care about the truth - they want to impress, or avoid looking stupid, or something similar. Hallucination is clearly the wrong word here, as is lying. Bullshitting isn't much better. Confabulation, however, is very close to what LLMs are doing when they make up stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabulation

iknownthing 2y ago

How about just "misprediction"?