this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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Normie, layman... as you've pointed out, it's difficult to use these words without sounding condescending (which I didn't mean to be). The media using words like "hallucinate" to describe linear algebra is necessary because most people just don't know enough math to understand the fundamentals of deep learning - which is completely fine, people can't know everything and everyone has their own specialties. But any time you simplify science so that it can be digestible by the masses, you lose critical information in the process, which can sometimes be harmfully misleading.
Or sometimes the colloquial term people have picked up is a simplified tool for getting the right point across.
Just because it's guessing using math doesn't mean it isn't hallucinating in a sense the additional data. It did not exist before and it willed it into existence much like a hallucination while being easy for people to catch onto quickly as not trustworthy thanks to previous definitions and understanding of the word.
Part of language is finding the right words to use so that people can quickly understand topics even if it means giving up nuance but absolutely it should be based on getting them to the right conclusion even if in a simplified form which doesn't always happen when there is bias. I think this one works just fine.
It’s not just the media who uses this term. According to this study which I’ve had a very brief skim of, the term “hallucination” was used in literature as early as 2000, and in Table 1, you can see hundreds of studies from various databases which they then go on to analyse the use of “hallucination” in.
It’s worth saying that this study is focused on showing how vague the term is, and how many different and conflicting definitions of “hallucination” there are in the literature, so I for sure agree it’s a confusing term. Just it is used by researchers as well as laypeople.
LLMs (the models that “hallucinate” is most often used in conjunction with) are not Deep Learning normie.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network_(machine_learning)
I’m not going to bother arguing with you but for anyone reading this: the poster above is making a bad faith semantic argument.
In the strictest technical terms AI, ML and Deep Learning are district, and they have specific applications.
This insufferable asshat is arguing that since they all use fuel, fire and air they are all engines. Which’s isn’t wrong but it’s also not the argument we are having.
@OP good day.
When you want to cite sources like me instead of making personal attacks, I’ll be here 🙂
I said good day.
Ok but before you go, just want to make sure you know that this statement of yours is incorrect:
Actually, they are not the distinct, mutually exclusive fields you claim they are. ML is a subset of AI, and Deep Learning is a subset of ML. AI is a very broad term for programs that emulate human perception and learning. As you can see in the last intro paragraph of the AI wikipedia page (whoa, another source! aren't these cool?), some examples of AI tools are listed:
Some of these - mathematical optimization, formal logic, statistics, and artificial neural networks - comprise the field known as machine learning. If you'll remember from my earlier citation about artificial neural networks, "deep learning" is when artificial neural networks have more than one hidden layer. Thus, DL is a subset of ML is a subset of AI (wow, sources are even cooler when there's multiple of them that you can logically chain together! knowledge is fun).
Anyways, good day :)