> We'll be able to buy HN comments by the thousand -- expertly wordsmithed, lucid AI comments
You're forgetting the millions of additional comments that will be written by humans to trick the AI into promoting their content.
Even worse, currently if you ask Chat GPT to write you some code, it will make up an API endpoint that doesn't exist and then make up a URL that doesn't exist where you can register for an API key. People are already registering these domains, and parking fake sites on them to scam people. ChatGPT is creating a huge market for creating fake companies to match the fake information it's generating.
The biggest risk may not be people using AI-generated comments to promote their own repos, but rather registering new repos to match the fake ones that the AI is already promoting.
I feel like you’re overstating this as a long term issue. sure it’s a problem now, but realistically how long before code hallucinations are patched out?
The black box nature of the model means this isn't something you can really 'patch out'. It's a byproduct of the way the system processes data - they'll get less frequent with targeted fine tuning and improved model power, but there's no easy solve.
this is clearly untrue. it’s an input, a black box, then an output. openai have 100% control over the output. they may not be able to directly control what comes out of the black box, but a) they can tune the model, and they undoubtedly will, and b) they can control what comes after the black box. they can—for example—simply block urls
They don’t have control over the output. They created something that creates something else. They can only tweak what they created, not whatever was created by what they created.
E.g., if I create a great paintbrush which creates amazing spatter designs on the wall when it is used just so, then, beyond a point, I have no way to control the spatter designs - I can only influence the designs to some extent.
Assuming those hallucinations are a thing to be patched out and not the core part of a system that works by essentially sampling a probability distribution for the most likely following word.
evidently, they can hard-code exceptions into it. this idea that it's entirely a black box that they have no control over is really strange and incorrect and feels to me like little more than contrarianism to my comment
By hallucinating they’re trying to imply that it didn’t just get something wrong but instead dreamed up an alternate world where what you want existed, and then described that.
Or another way to look at it, it gave an answer that looks right enough that you can’t immediately tell it is wrong.
this isn't a good explanation. these LLMs are essentially statistical models. when they "hallucinate", they're not "imagining" or "dreaming", they're simply producing a string of results that your prompt combined with its training corpus implies to be likely
Most people don’t understand the technology and maths at play in these systems. That’s normal, as is using familiar words that make that feel less awful. If you have a genuine interest in understanding how and why errant generated content emerges, it will take some study. There isn’t (in my opinion) a quick helpful answer.
I genuinely want to understand whether there’s a meaningful difference between non-hallucinatory and hallucinatory content generation other than “real world correctness”.
I’m far from an expert but as I understand it the reference point isn’t so much the “real world” as it is the training data. If the model generates a strongly weighted association that isn’t in the data, and shouldn’t exist perhaps at all. I’d prefer a word like “superstition”, it seems more relatable.
Folks, doesn't it seem a little harsh to pile downvotes onto this comment? It's an interesting objection stimulating meaningful conversation for us all to learn from.
If you disagree or have proof of the opposite, just say so and don't vote up. There's no reason to get so emotional we also try to hide it from the community by spamming it down into oblivion.
You're forgetting the millions of additional comments that will be written by humans to trick the AI into promoting their content.
Even worse, currently if you ask Chat GPT to write you some code, it will make up an API endpoint that doesn't exist and then make up a URL that doesn't exist where you can register for an API key. People are already registering these domains, and parking fake sites on them to scam people. ChatGPT is creating a huge market for creating fake companies to match the fake information it's generating.
The biggest risk may not be people using AI-generated comments to promote their own repos, but rather registering new repos to match the fake ones that the AI is already promoting.