> Hallucinations are a feature of reality that LLMs have inherited.
Huh? Are you arguing that we still live in a pre-scientific era where there’s no way to measure truth?
As a simple example, I asked Google about houseplant biology recently. The answer was very confidently wrong telling me that spider plants have a particular metabolic pathway because it confused them with jade plants and the two are often mentioned together. Humans wouldn’t make this mistake because they’d either know the answer or say that they don’t. LLMs do that constantly because they lack understanding and metacognitive abilities.
>Huh? Are you arguing that we still live in a pre-scientific era where there’s no way to measure truth?
No. A strange way to interpet their statement! Almost as if you ...hallucinated their intend!
They are arguing that humans also hallucinate: "LLMs much like humans" (...) "Just like your doctor occasionally giving you wrong advice too quickly".
As an aside, there was never a "pre-scientific era where there [was] no way to measure truth". Prior to the rise of modern science fields, there have still always been objective ways to judge truth in all kinds of domains.
Yes, that’s basically the point: what are termed hallucinations with LLMs are different than what we see in humans – even the confabulations which people with severe mental disorders exhibit tend to have some kind of underlying order or structure to them. People detect inconsistencies in their own behavior and that of others, which is why even that rushed doctor in the original comment won’t suggest something wildly off the way LLMs do routinely - they might make a mistake or have incomplete information but they will suggest things which fit a theory based on their reasoning and understanding, which yields errors at a lower rate and different class.
Huh? Are you arguing that we still live in a pre-scientific era where there’s no way to measure truth?
As a simple example, I asked Google about houseplant biology recently. The answer was very confidently wrong telling me that spider plants have a particular metabolic pathway because it confused them with jade plants and the two are often mentioned together. Humans wouldn’t make this mistake because they’d either know the answer or say that they don’t. LLMs do that constantly because they lack understanding and metacognitive abilities.