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Except the LLM didn't deliver a "wrong" result, it delivered text that is human readable and makes grammatical sense. Whether or not the information contained i
by leptons 2y ago
Except the LLM didn't deliver a "wrong" result, it delivered text that is human readable and makes grammatical sense. Whether or not the information contained in the text is "wrong" is subjective, and the reader gets to decide if it's factual or not. If the LLM delivered unreadable gibberish, then that could be considered "wrong", but there is no "hallicinating" going on with LLMs. That's an anthropomorphism that is divorced from the reality of what an LLM does. Whoever called it "hallucinating" in the context of an LLM should have their nerd credentials revoked.
- imchillyb 2y agoHuman beings have a tendency to prefer comforting lies over uncomfortable truths. "The truth may set you free, but first it's really gonna piss you off." -G.S.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoHuman readable, makes grammatical sense, and wrong. And no, that's often not subjective.
- leptons 2y agoIt's very subjective. An LLM could return statements like "Global warming is real and man-made", and it also could produce a result like "Global warming is a hoax", and it's definitely up to the reader as to whether the LLM is "hallucinating". It doesn't matter how readable or grammatically correct the LLM is, it's still up to the reader to call bullshit, or not.
- BurningFrog 2y agoIf you ask about opinions, sure. Because there are no "true" opinions. If you ask about the capital of France, any answer but "Paris" is objectively wrong, whether given by a human or LLM.
- leptons 2y agoParis has not always been the capital of France. Many other cities around France have been capital. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_of_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_of_France There's practically no subject you could bring up that an LLM wouldn't "hallucinate" or give "wrong" information about given that garbage in -> garbage out, and LLMs are trained on all the garbage (as well as too many facts) they've been able to scrape. The LLM lacks the ability to reason about what century the prompt is asking about, and a guess is all it is programmed to do. Also, if you ask 100 French citizens today what the true capital of France is, you're not always going to get "Paris" as a reply 100 times.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoBut if you ask "what is the capital of France" (not what it has been, but what it is), there is actually only one correct answer. "Capital" has a definition, and the headquarters of the government of France has a definite location. Sure, some French citizens will give a different answer. Some people will say the earth is flat, too. They are wrong.
- leptons 2y agoBut we're talking about LLMs in this thread, and the example I used of French citizens not always saying Paris is the capital of France is just an example of how topics can be subjective. If you have something pertinent to the LLM discussion, then please reply.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoThe capital of France is not subjective. People say stuff. Some of it is subjective, and some of it is just wrong. So, was your comment about Paris about the LLM discussion, or wasn't it? Because you're the one who brought it up, so if we got off topic, blame yourself. I have asserted that the LLMs are sometimes flat-out wrong. You have answered that point with an example of... what were you trying to say? That humans can also be wrong? If so, that's true, but so what? We were talking about LLMs. Or were you trying to say that even something like the capital of France is actually subjective? If so, you're wrong. "The capital of France" has only one correct answer, even if there are other answers in the training data. Or are you trying to say that it's not the LLM's fault, because the wrong answers are in the training data? That's true, but it's irrelevant. The LLM is still giving wrong answers to questions that have objectively correct answers. The LLM had that in its training data; that's what LLMs are; but that doesn't actually make the answer any less wrong. So what's your actual argument here? You seemed to be headed toward a "no answer can actually be objectively correct", which is both lousy epistemology, and completely unworkable in real life. But then you seemed to veer into... something. What are you actually trying to claim? This is sounding kind of harsh, but I really am not following what your actual point is.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoI said often not subjective. When it says that there are two "r"s in "strawberry", it is wrong, and it is not subjective at all. There's no wiggle room. It's wrong.
- kalleboo 2y agoThe term "hallucination" is in response to what the LLMs are being marketed and sold as what they are supposed to do, not how they work technologically. It makes sense to have better terms for technical discussions, but this term is going to stick around for mainstream use.