Google CEO Sundar Pichai says problems with its AI can't be solved because hallucinations are an inherent problem in these AI tools.

You know how Google’s new feature called AI Overviews is prone to spitting out wildly incorrect answers to search queries? In one instance, AI Overviews told a user to use glue on pizza to make sure the cheese won’t slide off (pssst…please don’t do this.)

Well, according to an interview at The Vergewith Google CEO Sundar Pichai published earlier this week, just before criticism of the outputs really took off, these “hallucinations” are an “inherent feature” of  AI large language models (LLM), which is what drives AI Overviews, and this feature “is still an unsolved problem.”

  • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8211·
    5 months ago

    We do know. It’s called critical thinking education. This is why we send people to college. Of course there are highly educated morons, but we are edging bets. This is why the dismantling or coopting of education is the first thing every single authoritarian does. It makes it easier to manipulate masses.

    • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
      581·
      5 months ago

      “Edging bets” sounds like a fun game, but I think you mean “hedging bets”, in which case you’re admitting we can’t actually do this reliably with people.

      And we certainly can’t do that with an LLM, which doesn’t actually think.

        • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
          111·
          5 months ago

          A big problem with that is that I’ve noticed your username.

          I wouldn’t even do that with Reagan’s fresh corpse.

      • explore_broaden@midwest.socialEnglish
        5·
        5 months ago

        I think that’s more a function of the fact that it’s difficult to verify that every one of the over 1M college graduates each year isn’t a “moron” (someone very bad about believing things other people made up). I think it would be possible to ensure a person has these critical thinking skills with a concerted effort.

        • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
          52·
          5 months ago

          The people you’re calling “morons” are orders of magnitude more sophisticated in their thinking than even the most powerful modern AI. Almost every single one of them can easily spot what’s wrong with AI hallucinations, even if you consider them “morons”. And also, by saying you have to filter out the “morons”, you’re still admitting that a lot of whole real assed people are still not reliably able to sort fact from fiction regardless of your education method.

          • explore_broaden@midwest.socialEnglish
            3·
            5 months ago

            No I still agree that we are far from LLMs being ‘thinking’ enough to be anywhere near this. But if we had a bunch of models similar to LLMs that could actually think, or if we really needed to select a person, I do think it would be possible to evaluate a bunch of the models/people to determine which ones are good at distinguishing fake information.

            All I’m saying is I don’t think the limitation is actually our ability to select for capability in distinguishing fake information, I think the only limitation is fundamental to how current LLMs work.

            • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
              3·
              5 months ago

              Yes, my point wasn’t that it could never be achieved but that LLMs are in a completely different category, which we agree on I think. I was comparing them to humans who have trouble with critical thinking but can easily spot AI’s hallucinations to illustrate the vast gulf.

              In both cases I think there are almost certainly more barriers in the way than an education. The quest for a truthful AI will be as contentious as the quest for truth in humans, meaning all the same claim-counterclaim culture-war propaganda tug of war will happen, which I think is the main reason for people being miseducated against critical thinking. In a vacuum it might be a simple technical and educational challenge, but the reason this is a problem in the first place is that we don’t exist in a political vacuum.

      • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
        19·
        5 months ago

        Choose a lane, this comment directly contradicts you previous comment. I think you are just trolling and being an idiot with corrections to elicit reactions.

    • RidcullyTheBrown@lemmy.worldEnglish
      73·
      5 months ago

      What does this have to do with AI and with what OP said? Their point was obviously about limitations of the software, not some lament about critical thinking