this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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This article shows rather well three reasons why I don't like the term "hallucination", when it comes to LLM output.
On the main topic of the article. Are LLMs useful? Sure! I use them myself. However only a fool would try to shove LLMs everywhere, with no regards to how intrinsically [yes] unsafe they are. And yet it's what big tech is doing, regardless of being Chinese or United-Statian or Russian or German or whatever.
I wouldn't call pasting verbatim training data hallucination when it fits the prompt. It's not necessarily making stuff up.
I feel like you're unfittingly mixing tool target behavior with technical limitations. Yes, it's not knowingly reasoning. But that doesn't change that the user interface is a prompt-style, with the goal of answering.
I think it's fitting terminology for encompassing multiple issues of false answers.
How would you call it? Only by their specific issues? Or would you use a general term, like "error" or "wrong"?
I've seen it being called hallucination plenty of times. Because the output is undesirable - even if it satisfies the prompt, it is not something you'd want the end user to see, as it shows that the whole thing is built upon the unpaid labour of everyone who uses the internet.
Calling the output by what it is (false, or immoral, or nonsensical) instead of a catch-all would be a progress, I think.