Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft's AI shopping announcement contains hallucinations in the demo

perfectrec.com

11–20 of 108 posts

Re: Microsoft's AI shopping announcement contains hallucinations in the demo

#11

Stop calling them hallucinations. If we're going to anthropomorphize AIs, let's just call it bullshitting and lies. If we're not going to anthropomorphize AIs, then we need a different term

Then tell us what we should call these manifestations... It's say to say stop calling it X, but then what are we supposed to call them?

Malfunctions? Breaking? Errors? Poor reliability?

Re: Microsoft's AI shopping announcement contains hallucinations in the demo

#12
Is it just me or does everyone trust AI opinions less and less ? Every time I ask it to find top 5 of something, I go and double check myself and almost always find it to be wrong. For example try searching for top 5 restaurants around me in bard. Some of them dont even exist lol and some are just random if you cross verify with actual popularity from yelp etc.

Re: Microsoft's AI shopping announcement contains hallucinations in the demo

#13
post #4

Stop calling them hallucinations. If we're going to anthropomorphize AIs, let's just call it bullshitting and lies. If we're not going to anthropomorphize AIs, then we need a different term

To be fair, if we are going to anthropomorphize it, bullshit and lies implies some sort of negative intent that I’m not sure the models have. Bullshit is probably the closest, as people will bullshit for all sorts of reasons, but hallucinations is at least intent-neutral, which I think is the point.

no not true - lazy, imperfect and damaged cognitive functions have similar results.

Re: Microsoft's AI shopping announcement contains hallucinations in the demo

#14

Stop calling them hallucinations. If we're going to anthropomorphize AIs, let's just call it bullshitting and lies. If we're not going to anthropomorphize AIs, then we need a different term

Then tell us what we should call these manifestations... It's say to say stop calling it X, but then what are we supposed to call them?

A popular term in the LLM space is 'confabulation': https://community.openai.com/t/hallucination-vs-confabulatio...

It fits better than the alternatives I've seen proposed.

Re: Microsoft's AI shopping announcement contains hallucinations in the demo

#15

Stop calling them hallucinations. If we're going to anthropomorphize AIs, let's just call it bullshitting and lies. If we're not going to anthropomorphize AIs, then we need a different term

Bullshitting has a goal, hallucinations are random, seems apt.

Re: Microsoft's AI shopping announcement contains hallucinations in the demo

#16

Is it just me or does everyone trust AI opinions less and less ? Every time I ask it to find top 5 of something, I go and double check myself and almost always find it to be wrong. For example try searching for top 5 restaurants around me in bard. Some of them dont even exist lol and some are just random if you cross verify with actual popularity from yelp etc.

It's just reality sinking in.

Re: Microsoft's AI shopping announcement contains hallucinations in the demo

#17

Stop calling them hallucinations. If we're going to anthropomorphize AIs, let's just call it bullshitting and lies. If we're not going to anthropomorphize AIs, then we need a different term

It’s the adopted term. I don’t see why it HAS to be the absolute exact closest possible term to what it would be in a human or something. It feels a bit like saying “stop calling it e-mail! It’s got nothing to do with real mail!”

Because people feel like they have nothing to add so instead of not adding anything they decide they have an issue with some minute detail that doesn't really matter and then start raising hell.

Re: Microsoft's AI shopping announcement contains hallucinations in the demo

#18

Stop calling them hallucinations. If we're going to anthropomorphize AIs, let's just call it bullshitting and lies. If we're not going to anthropomorphize AIs, then we need a different term

Given the euphemism "bug" substituting for "programming error" you'd be tempted to allow something similar for LLMs, but these are not errors, the output is by design.

There is no motive for truth, just the most likely output, even if the likeliness is low.

Re: Microsoft's AI shopping announcement contains hallucinations in the demo

#19
post #4

Stop calling them hallucinations. If we're going to anthropomorphize AIs, let's just call it bullshitting and lies. If we're not going to anthropomorphize AIs, then we need a different term

To be fair, if we are going to anthropomorphize it, bullshit and lies implies some sort of negative intent that I’m not sure the models have. Bullshit is probably the closest, as people will bullshit for all sorts of reasons, but hallucinations is at least intent-neutral, which I think is the point.

A person can 100% believe in the lies they've been told, but that person is not hallucinating.

Take for example climate change deniers; apart from the corporations and the politicians that abuse scepticism to maintain their power and wealth, many of the most fervent deniers truly believe the nonsense they're saying.

Perhaps a more neutral term like "falsehoods" is applicable here.

Re: Microsoft's AI shopping announcement contains hallucinations in the demo

#20

Stop calling them hallucinations. If we're going to anthropomorphize AIs, let's just call it bullshitting and lies. If we're not going to anthropomorphize AIs, then we need a different term

Then tell us what we should call these manifestations... It's say to say stop calling it X, but then what are we supposed to call them?

We should call it Twitter.
Post reply on HN