4 ms·

Everything an LLM returns is an hallucination, it's just that some of those hallucinations line up with reality

by PLenz 2y ago

mountainriver 2y ago
The same is true for humans
- mdp2021 2y ago
  It's a good thing that, as you state, "humans hold "togetherness" as a "true" value". But in this context, the value is in how much they have pondered to actually see and evaluate what is eventually seen as "true".
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
There's room for splitting hairs in there though. Even fiction, for instance, can succeed or fail at being internally consistent, is or is not grammatically correct... Calling everything an AI does a hallucination isn't incorrect, but it reduces the term to meaninglessness. I'm not sure that's most useful thing we can be doing. Atoms are not indivisible, yet we use the term because it works. I anticipate hallucination will be the same.
- Gormo 2y ago
  > Calling everything an AI does a hallucination isn't incorrect, but it reduces the term to meaninglessness. I don't think it does. In this case, "hallucination" refers to claims generated entirely within a closed system, but which pertain to a reality external to it. That's not meaningless, and makes "hallucinations" distinguishable from claims verified against direct observation of the reality they are meant to represent.
- namaria 2y ago
  > Atoms are not indivisible They are the smallest unit of a substance that cannot be broken down into smaller units of the same substance. They are, in a sense, indivisible.
  - Timwi 2y ago
    Of course they can. Carbon dioxide consists of quarks and electrons. I can divide it into units smaller than atoms and it's still quarks and electrons. All you did was a word trick by assuming a specific meaning of “substance”.
    - namaria 2y ago
      No word trick. Just pointing out that there's some nuance to it. > Carbon dioxide consists of quarks and electrons. But this is just plain wrong. Carbon dioxide consists of carbon dioxide molecules. There is no "carbon-dioxidity" to the quarks and electrons (which are also made of quarks) that the atoms that make the molecules can be broken down into.
      - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        That's a good point, I hadn't thought about it that way. Maybe it's a little less of an arbitrary choice than I was giving it credit for. It is not, however, Democratus's point. So I think the "words change, deal with it" argument still stands.
kelseyfrog 2y ago
Subjectively, we operate the same way.
- mdp2021 2y ago
  Look at things and fix it then.
  - kelseyfrog 2y ago
    The thing that needs to be fixed is in peoples' heads.
    - mdp2021 2y ago
      Exactly: if you hallucinate without adherence to facts, look at them facts and fix that distance. It's in your head - bad habit, bad instruments etc. - just fix it, do not just denounce the malfunction.
TZubiri 2y ago
How are you defining hallucination then? In some pretty useless way inevitably. Hallucinations are precisely the generated expressions that don't correlate with reality or are not truthful.
- Gormo 2y ago
  I don't think that definition works: it's attempting to categorize statements according to criteria completely external to them rather than according to any inherent property of the statement. A better definition is that a hallucination is an expression that is generated within a closed system without direct input from the reality it is meant to represent. The point is that an expression about reality that doesn't come from observing reality can only be true coincidentally. By way of analogy, if I have a dream about a future event, and then that event actually happens, it was still just a dream and not a clairvoyant vision of the future. Sure, my dreams are influenced by past experiences I've had (in the same way that verified facts are included in the training data for LLMs), which makes them likely to include things that frequently do happen in real life and might be likely to happen again -- but the dream an the LLM alike are effectively just "remixing" prior input, and not generating any new observations of reality.
  - TZubiri 2y ago
    "I don't think that definition works: it's attempting to categorize statements according to criteria completely external to them rather than according to any inherent property of the statement." Correct. The basic concept of truth in logic relies on an objective reality, an expression a priori holds truth even in the absence or indistinct of such a reality. But the truthfulness or correctness of a posteriori statements can depend on the reality. Examples of the former would be "If A is B, then B is C. A is B, then B is C" Example of the latter would be "It is raining outside." "A better definition is that a hallucination is an expression that is generated within a closed system without direct input from the reality it is meant to represent. The point is that an expression about reality that doesn't come from observing reality can only be true coincidentally." Absolutely incorrect, you are talking about a concept of the state of the art of science and tech but you are failing basic philosophy and epistemology concepts. The LLM has inputs from the reality (is it possible not to?), it is trained on a huge corpus of text written by humans that themselves perceive reality. The perception of reality can be indirect. We can measure something by observing it, or by observing an instrument that in turn observes it. "but the dream an the LLM alike are effectively just "remixing" prior input, and not generating any new observations of reality." Again incorrect for three reasons: 1- Novel observations can occur purely from remixing. Einstein locked himself during a pandemic and developed the theory of relativity without additional experimental output. 2- LLMs combine their existing data with human input, which is an external source. 3- LLMs can interact with other sources of data whether by injection of data into the prompt, by function calling, RAG, etc.. So yeah. Try to go back to basics and study simpler systems, ideally with source code. This might be out of your league.

Everything an LLM returns is an hallucination, it's just that some of those hallucinations line up with reality

by PLenz 2y ago

Everything an LLM returns is an hallucination, it's just that some of those hallucinations line up with reality

mountainriver 2y ago

The same is true for humans

mdp2021 2y ago
It's a good thing that, as you state, "humans hold "togetherness" as a "true" value". But in this context, the value is in how much they have pondered to actually see and evaluate what is eventually seen as "true".

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

There's room for splitting hairs in there though. Even fiction, for instance, can succeed or fail at being internally consistent, is or is not grammatically correct... Calling everything an AI does a hallucination isn't incorrect, but it reduces the term to meaninglessness. I'm not sure that's most useful thing we can be doing. Atoms are not indivisible, yet we use the term because it works. I anticipate hallucination will be the same.

Gormo 2y ago
> Calling everything an AI does a hallucination isn't incorrect, but it reduces the term to meaninglessness. I don't think it does. In this case, "hallucination" refers to claims generated entirely within a closed system, but which pertain to a reality external to it. That's not meaningless, and makes "hallucinations" distinguishable from claims verified against direct observation of the reality they are meant to represent.
namaria 2y ago
> Atoms are not indivisible They are the smallest unit of a substance that cannot be broken down into smaller units of the same substance. They are, in a sense, indivisible.
- Timwi 2y ago
  Of course they can. Carbon dioxide consists of quarks and electrons. I can divide it into units smaller than atoms and it's still quarks and electrons. All you did was a word trick by assuming a specific meaning of “substance”.
  - namaria 2y ago
    No word trick. Just pointing out that there's some nuance to it. > Carbon dioxide consists of quarks and electrons. But this is just plain wrong. Carbon dioxide consists of carbon dioxide molecules. There is no "carbon-dioxidity" to the quarks and electrons (which are also made of quarks) that the atoms that make the molecules can be broken down into.
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      That's a good point, I hadn't thought about it that way. Maybe it's a little less of an arbitrary choice than I was giving it credit for. It is not, however, Democratus's point. So I think the "words change, deal with it" argument still stands.

kelseyfrog 2y ago

Subjectively, we operate the same way.

mdp2021 2y ago
Look at things and fix it then.
- kelseyfrog 2y ago
  The thing that needs to be fixed is in peoples' heads.
  - mdp2021 2y ago
    Exactly: if you hallucinate without adherence to facts, look at them facts and fix that distance. It's in your head - bad habit, bad instruments etc. - just fix it, do not just denounce the malfunction.

TZubiri 2y ago

How are you defining hallucination then? In some pretty useless way inevitably. Hallucinations are precisely the generated expressions that don't correlate with reality or are not truthful.

Gormo 2y ago
I don't think that definition works: it's attempting to categorize statements according to criteria completely external to them rather than according to any inherent property of the statement. A better definition is that a hallucination is an expression that is generated within a closed system without direct input from the reality it is meant to represent. The point is that an expression about reality that doesn't come from observing reality can only be true coincidentally. By way of analogy, if I have a dream about a future event, and then that event actually happens, it was still just a dream and not a clairvoyant vision of the future. Sure, my dreams are influenced by past experiences I've had (in the same way that verified facts are included in the training data for LLMs), which makes them likely to include things that frequently do happen in real life and might be likely to happen again -- but the dream an the LLM alike are effectively just "remixing" prior input, and not generating any new observations of reality.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  "I don't think that definition works: it's attempting to categorize statements according to criteria completely external to them rather than according to any inherent property of the statement." Correct. The basic concept of truth in logic relies on an objective reality, an expression a priori holds truth even in the absence or indistinct of such a reality. But the truthfulness or correctness of a posteriori statements can depend on the reality. Examples of the former would be "If A is B, then B is C. A is B, then B is C" Example of the latter would be "It is raining outside." "A better definition is that a hallucination is an expression that is generated within a closed system without direct input from the reality it is meant to represent. The point is that an expression about reality that doesn't come from observing reality can only be true coincidentally." Absolutely incorrect, you are talking about a concept of the state of the art of science and tech but you are failing basic philosophy and epistemology concepts. The LLM has inputs from the reality (is it possible not to?), it is trained on a huge corpus of text written by humans that themselves perceive reality. The perception of reality can be indirect. We can measure something by observing it, or by observing an instrument that in turn observes it. "but the dream an the LLM alike are effectively just "remixing" prior input, and not generating any new observations of reality." Again incorrect for three reasons: 1- Novel observations can occur purely from remixing. Einstein locked himself during a pandemic and developed the theory of relativity without additional experimental output. 2- LLMs combine their existing data with human input, which is an external source. 3- LLMs can interact with other sources of data whether by injection of data into the prompt, by function calling, RAG, etc.. So yeah. Try to go back to basics and study simpler systems, ideally with source code. This might be out of your league.