this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 50 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Can we fucking stop anthropomorphising software?

[–] [email protected] 76 points 8 months ago (21 children)

"Hallucinate" is the standard term used to explain the GenAI models coming up with untrue statements

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

in terms of communication utility, it's also a very accurate term.

when WE hallucinate, it's because our internal predictive models are flying off the rails filling in the blanks based on assumptions rather than referencing concrete sensory information and generating results that conflict with reality.

when AIs hallucinate, it's due to its predictive model generating results that do not align with reality because it instead flew off the rails presuming what was calculated to be likely to exist rather than referencing positively certain information.

it's the same song, but played on a different instrument.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (3 children)

when WE hallucinate, it's because our internal predictive models are flying off the rails filling in the blanks based on assumptions rather than referencing concrete sensory information and generating results that conflict with reality.

Is it really? You make it sound like this is a proven fact.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Is it really? You make it sound like this is a proven fact.

I believe that's where the scientific community is moving towards, based on watching this Kyle Hill video.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

i mean, idk about the assumptions part of it, but if you asked a psych or a philosopher, im sure they would agree.

Or they would disagree and have about 3 pages worth of thoughts to immediately exclaim otherwise they would feel uneasy about their statement.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Better than one of those pesky unproven facts

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think a more accurate term would be confabulate based on your explanation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

you know what, i like that! I like that a lot!

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

No?

An anthropomorphic model of the software, wherein you can articulate things like "the software is making up packages", or "the software mistakenly thinks these packages ought to exist", is the right level of abstraction for usefully reasoning about software like this. Using that model, you can make predictions about what will happen when you run the software, and you can take actions that will lead to the outcomes you want occurring more often when you run the software.

If you try to explain what is going on without these concepts, you're left saying something like "the wrong token is being sampled because the probability of the right one is too low because of several thousand neural network weights being slightly off of where they would have to be to make the right one come out consistently". Which is true, but not useful.

The anthropomorphic approach suggests stuff like "yell at the software in all caps to only use python packages that really exist", and that sort of approach has been found to be effective in practice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Woops sorry mate, too late.