4 ms·

This is a somewhat nihilistic take with an optimistic ending. I believe humans will never fix hallucinations. Amount of totally or partially untrue statements p

This is a somewhat nihilistic take with an optimistic ending. I believe humans will never fix hallucinations. Amount of totally or partially untrue statements people make is significant. Especially in tech, it's rare for people to admit that they do not know something. And yet, despite all of that the progress keeps marching forward and maybe even accelerating.

ketzo 2y ago
Yeah, I think a lot of people talk about "fixing hallucinations" as the end goal, rather than "LLMs providing value", which misses the forest for the trees; it's obviously already true that we don't need totally hallucination-free output to get value from these models.
- mdp2021 2y ago
  Even as language models can partially solve a few problems, we remain with the problem of achieving Artificial General Intelligence, that the presence of LLMs has exacerbated because they so often reveal to be artificial morons. Intelligence finds solutions - actual, solid solutions. More than "fixing" hallucinations, the problem is going beyond them (arriving to "sobriety").
dtnewman 2y ago
I’m not sure I follow. Sure, people lie, and make stuff up all the time. If an LLM goes and parrots that, then I would argue that it isn’t hallucinating. Hallucinating would be where it makes something up that is not in its training site nor logically deducible from it.
esafak 2y ago
I think most humans are perfectly capable of admitting to themselves when they do not know something. Computers ought to do better.
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  You must interact with a very different set of humans than most.
danielmarkbruce 2y ago
Once one starts thinking of them as "concept models" rather than language models or fact models, "hallucinations" become something not to be so fixated on. We transform tokens into 12k+ length embeddings... right at the start. They stop being language immediately. They aren't fact machines. They are concept machines.
mdp2021 2y ago
Not an argument. "Many people are delirious, yet some people create progress". What is that supposed to imply?

ketzo 2y ago

Yeah, I think a lot of people talk about "fixing hallucinations" as the end goal, rather than "LLMs providing value", which misses the forest for the trees; it's obviously already true that we don't need totally hallucination-free output to get value from these models.

mdp2021 2y ago
Even as language models can partially solve a few problems, we remain with the problem of achieving Artificial General Intelligence, that the presence of LLMs has exacerbated because they so often reveal to be artificial morons. Intelligence finds solutions - actual, solid solutions. More than "fixing" hallucinations, the problem is going beyond them (arriving to "sobriety").

dtnewman 2y ago

I’m not sure I follow. Sure, people lie, and make stuff up all the time. If an LLM goes and parrots that, then I would argue that it isn’t hallucinating. Hallucinating would be where it makes something up that is not in its training site nor logically deducible from it.

esafak 2y ago

I think most humans are perfectly capable of admitting to themselves when they do not know something. Computers ought to do better.

danielmarkbruce 2y ago
You must interact with a very different set of humans than most.

danielmarkbruce 2y ago

Once one starts thinking of them as "concept models" rather than language models or fact models, "hallucinations" become something not to be so fixated on. We transform tokens into 12k+ length embeddings... right at the start. They stop being language immediately. They aren't fact machines. They are concept machines.

mdp2021 2y ago

Not an argument. "Many people are delirious, yet some people create progress". What is that supposed to imply?