this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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I think you're giving a glorified encyclopedia too much credit. The difference between us and "AI" is that we can approach knowledge from a problem solving position. We do approximate the laws of physics, but we don't blindly take our beliefs and run with it. We put we come up with a theory that then gets rigorously criticized, then come up with ways to test that theory, then be critical of the test results and eventually we come to consensus that based on our understandings that thing is true. We've built entire frameworks to reduce our "hallucinations". The reason we even know we have blind spots is because we're so critical of our own "hallucinations" that we end up deliberately looking for our blind spots.
But the "AI" doesn't do that. It can't do that. The "AI" can't solve problems, it can't be critical of itself or what information its giving out. All our current "AI" can do is word vomit itself into a reasonable answer. Sometimes the word vomit is factually correct, sometimes it's just nonsense.
You are right that theoretically hallucinations cannot be solved, but in practicality we ourselves have come up with solutions to minimize it. We could probably do something similar with "AI" but not when the AI is just a LLM that fumbles into sentences.
I'm not sure where you think I'm giving it too much credit, because as far as I read it we already totally agree lol. You're right, methods exist to diminish the effect of hallucinations. That's what the scientific method is. Current AI has no physical body and can't run experiments to verify objective reality. It can't fact check itself other than be told by the humans training it what is correct (and humans are fallible), and even then if it has gaps in what it knows it will fill it up with something probable - but which is likely going to be bullshit.
All my point was, is that to truly fix it would be to basically create an omniscient being, which cannot exist in our physical world. It will always have to make some assumptions - just like we do.
The fundamental difference is that the AI doesn't know anything. It isn't capable of understanding, it doesn't learn in the same sense that humans learn. A LLM is a (complex!) digital machine that guesses the next most likely word based on essentially statistics, nothing more, nothing less.
It doesn't know what it's saying, nor does it understand the subject matter, or what a human is, or what a hallucination is or why it has them. They are fundamentally incapable of even perceiving the problem, because they do not perceive anything aside from text in and text out.
Many people's entire thought process is an internal monologue. You think that voice is magic? It takes input and generates a conceptual internal dialogue based on what it's previously experienced (training data for long term, context for short term). What do you mean when you say you understand something? What is the mechanism that your brain undergoes that's defined as understanding?
Because for me it's an internal conversation that asserts an assumption based on previous data and then attacks it with the next most probable counter argument systematically until what I consider a "good idea" emerges that is reasonably vetted. Then I test it in the real world by enacting the scientific process. The results are added to my long term memory (training data).