3 ms·

> an LLM would have linked to the original study There is a non-trivial chance that the LLM would've added a link to _something_, but links/references seem lik

> an LLM would have linked to the original study There is a non-trivial chance that the LLM would've added a link to _something_, but links/references seem like a very common thing to hallucinate, no?

PhantomHour 1y ago
The way around that is that is for LLM-based tools to run a regular search engine query in the background and feed the results of that in alongside the prompt. (Usually a two-step process of the LLM formulating the query, then another pass on the results) The used results can then have their link either added to the end result separately, guaranteeing it is correct, or added to the prompt and "telling the LLM to include it", which retains a risk of hallucination, yes. Common to both of these is the failure mode that the LLM can still hallucinate whilst "summarizing" the results, meaning you still have no guarantee that the claims made actually show up in the results.
- coldtea 1y ago
  >The way around that is that is for LLM-based tools to run a regular search engine query in the background and feed the results of that in alongside the prompt. Hardly better, as soon those "search engine results" would be AI slop themselves, including actual published papers (phoned-in by using AI, and "peer reviewed" by using AI from indifferent reviewers)
- butbuttbutbut 1y ago
  The only thing that can solve the misinformation from a bad LLM is the misinformation from a good LLM... with a gun.
- dylan604 1y ago
  > The way around that is that is for LLM-based tools to run a regular search engine query in the background and feed the results of that in alongside the prompt. (Usually a two-step process of the LLM formulating the query, then another pass on the results) Would the LLM-based tool be able to determine that the top results are just SEO-spam sites and move lower in the list, or just accept the spam results as gospel?
  - PhantomHour 1y ago
    This is an extremely tricky question. The practical and readily-observable-from-output answer is "No, they cannot meaningfully identify spam or misinformation, and do indeed just accept the results as gospel"; Google's AI summary works this way and is repeatedly wrong in exactly this way. Google's repeatedly had it be wrong even in the adcopy. The theoretical mechanism is that the attention mechanism with LLMs would be able to select which parts of the results are fed further into the results. This is how the model is capable of finding parts of the text that are "relevant". The problem is that this just isn't enough to robustly identify spam or incorrect information. However, we can isolate this "find the relevant bit" functionality away from the rest of the LLM to enhance regular search engines. It's hard to say how useful this is; Google has intentionally damaged their search engine and it may simply not be worth the GPU cycles compared to traditional approaches, but it's an idea being widely explored right now.
loa_in_ 1y ago
This used to be a problem but it's been unheard of for a while
- seattle_spring 1y ago
  Definitely not unheard of. Claude gives broken links to documentation at least once a week.
- coldtea 1y ago
  Happens frequently still with GTP 4o (and now 5) and Claude. Makes up "biographies" unrelated to the actual people, gives me bullshit non-existing API options and cli flags, etc.
  - Workaccount2 1y ago
    People say this, but then never link to chats. And then on the rare occasion they do link to a chat, their prompt is something like: "Tell about a person of history who was important for their work inthe time of their existence and give quotes of what they said that made them important when they were speaking include notes and other stories about them and give details about their life who they married and their kids and who their parents were and other big things they did do in their lives" Instead of downvotes, please prove me wrong.
    - gbin 1y ago
      It feels so common actually that I would not even bother sharing them. ChatGPT gives me hallucinated URLs all... the... time. Like several times a day. You can fix it by prompting it to Google the subject or research it otherwise it just vomits garbage.
      - danielbln 1y ago
        LLMs are not databases, they are text processors that need to be trained on ungodly amounts of data and can sort of kind of double as a database, though a very fallible one. Inject ground truth and you're cooking; don't and it's a crap shoot. (not saying anything new here, but it bears repeating).

PhantomHour 1y ago

The way around that is that is for LLM-based tools to run a regular search engine query in the background and feed the results of that in alongside the prompt. (Usually a two-step process of the LLM formulating the query, then another pass on the results) The used results can then have their link either added to the end result separately, guaranteeing it is correct, or added to the prompt and "telling the LLM to include it", which retains a risk of hallucination, yes. Common to both of these is the failure mode that the LLM can still hallucinate whilst "summarizing" the results, meaning you still have no guarantee that the claims made actually show up in the results.

coldtea 1y ago
>The way around that is that is for LLM-based tools to run a regular search engine query in the background and feed the results of that in alongside the prompt. Hardly better, as soon those "search engine results" would be AI slop themselves, including actual published papers (phoned-in by using AI, and "peer reviewed" by using AI from indifferent reviewers)
butbuttbutbut 1y ago
The only thing that can solve the misinformation from a bad LLM is the misinformation from a good LLM... with a gun.
dylan604 1y ago
> The way around that is that is for LLM-based tools to run a regular search engine query in the background and feed the results of that in alongside the prompt. (Usually a two-step process of the LLM formulating the query, then another pass on the results) Would the LLM-based tool be able to determine that the top results are just SEO-spam sites and move lower in the list, or just accept the spam results as gospel?
- PhantomHour 1y ago
  This is an extremely tricky question. The practical and readily-observable-from-output answer is "No, they cannot meaningfully identify spam or misinformation, and do indeed just accept the results as gospel"; Google's AI summary works this way and is repeatedly wrong in exactly this way. Google's repeatedly had it be wrong even in the adcopy. The theoretical mechanism is that the attention mechanism with LLMs would be able to select which parts of the results are fed further into the results. This is how the model is capable of finding parts of the text that are "relevant". The problem is that this just isn't enough to robustly identify spam or incorrect information. However, we can isolate this "find the relevant bit" functionality away from the rest of the LLM to enhance regular search engines. It's hard to say how useful this is; Google has intentionally damaged their search engine and it may simply not be worth the GPU cycles compared to traditional approaches, but it's an idea being widely explored right now.

loa_in_ 1y ago

This used to be a problem but it's been unheard of for a while

seattle_spring 1y ago
Definitely not unheard of. Claude gives broken links to documentation at least once a week.
coldtea 1y ago
Happens frequently still with GTP 4o (and now 5) and Claude. Makes up "biographies" unrelated to the actual people, gives me bullshit non-existing API options and cli flags, etc.
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  People say this, but then never link to chats. And then on the rare occasion they do link to a chat, their prompt is something like: "Tell about a person of history who was important for their work inthe time of their existence and give quotes of what they said that made them important when they were speaking include notes and other stories about them and give details about their life who they married and their kids and who their parents were and other big things they did do in their lives" Instead of downvotes, please prove me wrong.
  - gbin 1y ago
    It feels so common actually that I would not even bother sharing them. ChatGPT gives me hallucinated URLs all... the... time. Like several times a day. You can fix it by prompting it to Google the subject or research it otherwise it just vomits garbage.
    - danielbln 1y ago
      LLMs are not databases, they are text processors that need to be trained on ungodly amounts of data and can sort of kind of double as a database, though a very fallible one. Inject ground truth and you're cooking; don't and it's a crap shoot. (not saying anything new here, but it bears repeating).