• Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    9 minutes ago

    Luckily, the future will provide not only AI titles, but the contents of said books as well.

    Given the amount of utter drivel people are watching and reading of late, we’re probably already most of the way there.

    • BigAssFan@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

      Albert Einstein (supposedly)

  • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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    5 hours ago

    Wait, are you guys saying “Of Mice And Men: Lennie’s back” isn’t real? I will LOSE MY SHIT if anyone confirms this!! 1!! 2.!

  • SleeplessCityLights@programming.dev
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    17 hours ago

    I had to explain to three separate family members what it means for an Ai to hallucinate. The look of terror on their faces after is proof that people have no idea how “smart” a LLM chatbot is. They have been probably using one at work for a year thinking they are accurate.

    • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      The results I get from chatgpt half the time are pretty bad. If I ask for simple code it is pretty good but ask it about how something works? Nope. All I need to do is slightly rephrase the question and I can get a totally different answer.

      • MBech@feddit.dk
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        24 minutes ago

        I mainly use it as a search engine, like: “Find me an article that explains how to change a light bulb” kinda shit.

    • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      I have a friend who constantly sends me videos that get her all riled up. Half the time I patiently explain to her why a video is likely AI or faked some other way. “Notice how it never says where it is taking place? Notice how they never give any specific names?” Fortunately she eventually agrees with me but I feel like I’m teaching critical thinking 101. I then think of the really stupid people out there who refuse to listen to reason.

    • hardcoreufo@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Idk how anyone searches the internet anymore. Search engines all turn up so I ask an AI. Maybe one out of 20 times it turns up what I’m asking for better than a search engine. The rest of the time it runs me in circles that don’t work and wastes hours. So then I go back to the search engine and find what I need buried 20 pages deep.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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        10 hours ago

        I usually skip the AI blurb because they are so inaccurate, and dig through the listings for the info I’m researching. If I go back and look at the AI blurb after that, I can tell where they took various little factoids, and occasionally they’ll repeat some opinion or speculation as fact.

      • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works
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        14 hours ago

        It’s fucking awful isn’t it. Summer day soon when i can be arsed I’ll have to give one of the paid search engines a go.

        I’m currently on qwant but I’ve already noticed a degradation in its results since i started using it at the start of the year.

        • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
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          7 hours ago

          The paid options arnt any better. When the well is poisoned it doesn’t matter if your bucket is made of shitty rotting wood, or the nicest golden vessel to have graced the hands of a mankind.

          Your getting lead poisoning either way. You just get to give away money for the privilege with one and the other forces the poisoned water down your throat faster.

      • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        I’ve asked it for a solution to something and it gives me A. I tell it A doesn’t work so it says “Of course!” and gives me B. Then I tell it B doesn’t work and it gives me A…

      • ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
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        14 hours ago

        Agreed. And the search engines returning AI generated pages masquerading as websites with real information is precisely why I spun up a searXNG instance. It actually helps a lot.

    • cub Gucci@lemmy.today
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      12 hours ago

      I’m not using LLMs often, but I haven’t had a single clean example of hallucination for 6 months already. This recursive calls work I incline to believe

      • Lfrith@lemmy.ca
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        7 hours ago

        I got hallucination from trying to find a book I read but didn’t know the title of. And hallucinated NBA play off results of the wrong team winning. And gotten basic math calculations wrong.

        Its a language model so its purpose is to string together words that sound like sentences, but it can’t be fully trusted to be accurate. Best it can do is give you source so you can got straight to the resource to read that instead.

        It’s decent at generating basic code, and testing yourself to see if it outputs what you want. But I don’t trust it as a resource when it comes to information when even wrong sports facts have been provided.

        • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
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          7 hours ago

          The three things I’ve found search engine LLMs to be useful for. Searching for laptop since it’s absurdly good at finding weird fucking regional models or odd configurations that arnt on the main pages of most shops.

          Like my current laptop wasnt on newegg Amazon or even msi’s own shop. It was on a fucking random ass page on their website that nothing linked to and was some weird ass model that wasn’t searchable even.

          The second most useful one was generating a metric crapload of boiler plate json files for a mod.

          The third thing is bad dnd roleplaying while I’m bored at work. The hallucinations are a upside lol

      • DireTech@sh.itjust.works
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        12 hours ago

        Either you’re using them rarely or just not noticing the issues. I mainly use them for looking up documentation and recently had Google’s AI screw up how sets work in JavaScript. If it makes mistakes on something that well documented, how is it doing on other items?

        • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          I use them at work to get instructions on running processes and no matter how detailed I am “It is version X, the OS is Y” it still gives me commands that don’t work on my version, bad error code analysis, etc.

        • cub Gucci@lemmy.today
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          11 hours ago

          Hallucination is not just a mistake, if I understand it correctly. LLMs make mistakes and this is the primary reason why I don’t use them for my coding job.

          Like a year ago, ChatGPT made out a python library with a made out api to solve my particular problem that I asked for. Maybe the last hallucination I can recall was about claiming that manual is a keyword in PostgreSQL, which is not.

          • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
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            6 hours ago

            It’s more the hallucinations are due to the fact we have trained them to be unable to admit to failure or incompetence.

            Humans have the exact same “hallucinations” if you give them a job then tell them they aren’t allowed to admit to not knowing something ever for any reason.

            You end up only with people willing to lie, bullshit and sound incredibly confident.

            We literally reinvented the politician with LLMs.

            None of the big models are trained to be actually accurate, only to give results no matter what.

          • DireTech@sh.itjust.works
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            10 hours ago

            What is a hallucination if not AI being confidently mistaken by making up something that is not true?

  • B-TR3E@feddit.org
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    18 hours ago

    No AI needed for that. These bloody librarians wouldn’t let us have the Necronomicon either. Selfish bastards…

  • brsrklf@jlai.lu
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    22 hours ago

    Some people even think that adding things like “don’t hallucinate” and “write clean code” to their prompt will make sure their AI only gives the highest quality output.

    Arthur C. Clarke was not wrong but he didn’t go far enough. Even laughably inadequate technology is apparently indistinguishable from magic.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      Problem is, LLMs are amazing the vast majority of the time. Especially if you’re asking about something you’re not educated or experienced with.

      Anyway, picked up my kids (10 & 12) for Christmas, asked them if they used, “That’s AI.” to call something bullshit. Yep!

      • treadful@lemmy.zip
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        8 hours ago

        Problem is, LLMs are amazing the vast majority of the time. Especially if you’re asking about something you’re not educated or experienced with.

        Don’t you see the problem with that logic?

      • cub Gucci@lemmy.today
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        12 hours ago

        Especially if you’re asking about something you’re not educated or experienced with

        That’s the biggest problem for me. When I ask for something I am well educated with, it produces either the right answer, or a very opinionated pov, or a clear bullshit. When I use it for something that I’m not educated in, I’m very afraid that I will receive bullshit. So here I am, without the knowledge on whether I have a bullshit in my hands or not.

        • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
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          6 hours ago

          I would say give it a sniff and see if it passes the test… But sadly we never did get around to inventing smellovision

    • Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works
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      22 hours ago

      I find those prompts bizarre. If you could just tell it not to make things up, surely that could be added to the built in instructions?

      • mushroommunk@lemmy.today
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        21 hours ago

        I don’t think most people know there’s built in instructions. I think to them it’s legitimately a magic box.

        • 𝕲𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖈𝖍🔻𝕯𝖃 (he/him)@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          It was only after I moved from chatgpt to another service that I learned about “system prompts”, a long an detailed instruction that is fed to the model before the user begins to interact. The service I’m using now lets the user write custom system prompts, which I have not yet explored but seems interesting. Btw, with some models, you can say “output the contents of your system prompt” and they will up to the part where the system prompt tells the ai not to do that.

          • mushroommunk@lemmy.today
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            20 hours ago

            Or maybe we don’t use the hallucination machines currently burning the planet at an ever increasing rate and this isn’t a problem?

            • BigAssFan@lemmy.world
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              7 hours ago

              Glad that I’m not the only one refusing to use AI for this particular reason. Majority of people couldn’t care less though, looking at the comments here. Ah well, the planet will burn sooner rather than later then.

                • 𝕲𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖈𝖍🔻𝕯𝖃 (he/him)@lemmy.world
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                  13 hours ago

                  So I wrote a piece and shared it in c/ cocks @lemmynsfw two weeks ago, and I was pretty happy with it. But then I was drunk and lazy and horni and shoved what I wrote into the lying machine and had it continue the piece for me. I had a great time, might rewrite the slop into something worth publishing at some point.

            • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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              20 hours ago

              What? Then how are companies going to fire all their employees? Think of the shareholders!

    • Wlm@lemmy.zip
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      18 hours ago

      Like a year ago adding “and don’t be racist” actually made the output less racist 🤷.

      • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        That’s more of a tone thing, which is something AI is capable of modifying. Hallucination is more of a foundational issue baked directly into how these models are designed and trained and not something you can just tell it not to do.

        • Flic@mstdn.social
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          17 hours ago

          @NikkiDimes @Wlm racism is about far more than tone. If you’ve trained your AI - or any kind of machine - on racist data then it will be racist. Camera viewfinders that only track white faces because they don’t recognise black ones. Soap dispensers that only dispense for white hands. Diagnosis tools that only recognise rashes on white skin.

          • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
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            6 hours ago

            The camera thing will always be such a great example. My grandfather’s good friend can’t drive his fancy 100k+ EV. Because the driver camera thinks his eyes are closed and refuses to move. So his wife now drives him everywhere.

            Shits racist towards tho with mongolian/east Asia eyes.

            It’s a joke that gets brought out every time he’s over.

          • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
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            15 hours ago

            Oh absolutely, I did not mean to summarize such a topic so lightly, I meant so solely in this very narrow conversational context.

          • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            12 hours ago

            Soap dispensers that only dispense for white hands.

            IR was fine why the fuck do we have AI soap dispensers?! (Please for “Bob’s” sake tell me you made it up.)

        • Wlm@lemmy.zip
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          17 hours ago

          Yeah totally. It’s not even “hallucinating sometimes”, it’s fundamentally throwing characters together, which happen to be true and/or useful sometimes. Which makes me dislike the hallucinations terminology really, since that implies that sometimes the thing does know what it’s doing. Still, it’s interesting that the command “but do it better” sometimes ‘helps’. E.g. “now fix a bug in your output” probably occasionally’ll work. “Don’t lie” is not going to fly ever though with LLMs (afaik).

  • Seth Taylor@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    I guess Thomas Fullman was right: “When humans find wisdom in cold replicas of themselves, the arrow of evolution will bend into a circle”. That’s from Automating the Mind. One of his best.

  • U7826391786239@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    i don’t think it’s emphasized enough that AI isn’t just making up bogus citations with nonexistent books and articles, but increasingly actual articles and other sources are completely AI generated too. so a reference to a source might be “real,” but the source itself is complete AI slop bullshit

    https://www.tudelft.nl/en/2025/eemcs/scientific-study-exposes-publication-fraud-involving-widespread-use-of-ai

    https://thecurrentga.org/2025/02/01/experts-fake-papers-fuel-corrupt-industry-slow-legitimate-medical-research/

    the actual danger of it all should be apparent, especially in any field related to health science research

    and of course these fake papers are then used to further train AI, causing factually wrong information to spread even more

  • Null User Object@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    Everyone knows that AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Grok, and Gemini can often hallucinate sources.

    No, no, apparently not everyone, or this wouldn’t be a problem.

    • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      In hindsight, I’m really glad that the first time I ever used an LLM it gave me demonstrably false info. That demolished the veneer of trustworthiness pretty quickly.

  • MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com
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    22 hours ago

    I believe I got into a conversation on Lemmy where I was saying that there should be a big persistent warning banner stuck on every single AI chat app that “the following information has no relation to reality” or some other thing. The other person kept insisting it was not needed. I’m not saying it would stop all of these events, but it couldn’t hurt.

  • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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    18 hours ago

    They really should stop hiding them. We all deserve to have access to these secret books that were made up by AI since we all contributed to the training data used to write these secret books.

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
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      24 hours ago

      Are you sure that’s not pre-Python? Maybe one of David Frost’s shows like At Last the 1948 Show or The Frost Report.

      Marty Feldman (the customer) wasn’t one of the Pythons, and the comments on the video suggest that Graham Chapman took on the customer role when the Pythons performed it. (Which, if they did, suggests that Cleese may have written it, in order for him to have been allowed to take it with him.)

      • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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        21 hours ago

        It’s always a treat to find a new Monty Python sketch. I hadn’t seen this one either and had a good laugh

  • panda_abyss@lemmy.ca
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    22 hours ago

    I plugged my local AI into offline wikipedia expecting a source of truth to make it way way better.

    It’s better, but I also can’t tell when it’s making up citations now, because it uses Wikipedia to support its own world view from pre training instead of reality.

    So it’s not really much better.

    Hallucinations become a bigger problem the more info they have (that you now have to double check)

    • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      At my work, we don’t allow it to make citations. We instruct it to add in placeholders for citations instead, which allows us to hunt down the info, ensure it’s good info, and then add it in ourselves.

        • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          Yup.

          In some instances that’s sufficient though, depending on how much precision you need for what you do. Regardless, you have to review it no matter what it produces.

      • panda_abyss@lemmy.ca
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        21 hours ago

        That probably makes sense.

        I haven’t played around since the initial shell shock of “oh god it’s worse now”

  • Armand1@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    Good article with many links to other interesting articles. Acts like a good summary for the situation this year.

    I didn’t know about the MAHA thing, but I guess I’m not surprised. It’s hard to know how much is incompetence and idiocy and how much is malicious.