Anthropomorphizing LLM is at best misleading, but probably extremely dangerous. At first I didn’t care too much, the “hallucination” term got traction, now the

Anthropomorphizing LLM is at best misleading, but probably extremely dangerous. At first I didn’t care too much, the “hallucination” term got traction, now the ladies on The View are saying it and thinking they “understand ai”. The public needs to know how LLM work, they don’t need bs abstractions that blur or even erase the lines between humans and technology. LLM don’t hallucinate, they don’t confabulate. They are machines that operate according to principles all educated people need to understand. It’s the duty of the people who understand it better to educate them, not with half truths and metaphors (though I sort of like rms’ “bullshit generator” - it’s obviously wrong enough/funny in a way that lets people know it’s not a precise technical definition, while coming very close to being an accurate technical definition.) The danger of ai is this: confusing human and machine. They are separate and different, and must remain that way. LLM aren’t capable of hallucinating, confabulating any more than they are capable of falling in love or serving on jury duty. They repeat the patterns found in the text you feed them. That’s it.