Philip K. Dick wrote the novel, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” in 1968. The basis for the Blade Runner movies, the story follows a bounty hunter tracking down escaped androids. Like many futuristic novels, the author underestimated how long it will take for technology to advance. If my memory is correct, we didn’t have life-like robots in 1992.
While we don’t have dreaming androids today, we do have artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots that “hallucinate”. I use quotes, because these are computer errors, not actual hallucinations where our imagination creates false perceptions that we think are real. For the purpose of this post, an AI “hallucination” is an output error that sounds plausible, but is factually incorrect.
Hallucinations that have made the news include chatbots that draft legal opinions based on non-existent court cases. AI vision systems might misidentify objects (or people) in images. An AI engine may even get simple math problems wrong, like detecting a prime number.
These errors may occur because of poor training data or model design. Many generative AI models are trained using accessible data on the internet. That will include false and inaccurate data published both by accident and on purpose. Unsupervised, the model can’t differentiate what is actually true, and may provide answers based on a falsehood or bias.
Generative AI models are built to generate content based on past patterns, not validate the accuracy of the information. If there is a gap in the data, the model will produce new content that appears to complete the pattern. The result may sound reasonable, but is actually incorrect.
To counter hallucinations, AI users should always critically evaluate the answers provided. If it doesn’t sound correct, it may not be. Double check critical responses by using other sources – including different browsers and multiple search engines. And lastly, always check the sources.
As the saying goes – trust, but verify.
Amazing Astronomical Fact: The Earth is the fifth largest planet in the solar system. In a unique coincidence, our Moon is the fifth largest natural satellite in the solar system. Only Jupiter and Saturn have larger moons:
Ganymede (Jupiter)
Titan (Saturn)
Callisto (Jupiter)
Io (Jupiter)
The Moon is also the largest satellite relative to the planet that it orbits. The current leading theory is that it formed when a Mars-sized body impacted with the Earth. When initially formed, the Moon was much closer to Earth than it is today. Since then, it has slowly moved away, getting about an inch further from us each year.
#artificialintelligence #ai #hallucinations #errors #moon #theberkshirecompany
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