AI - stupid and hallucinating?

Comments

• Old_Joe

  July 2 edited July 2

  This is a fascinating topic and it would be great if we could have an in-depth conversation by some posters who are qualified by background, experience or training in the relevant areas.
• DrVenture

  July 3 edited July 3

  I am no AI expert. But, much can be extrapolated through other expertise and common constructs.
  
  Firstly, if all AI did was copy, consolidate and dump verbatim the data it was using for input, it would essentially be a search engine or a machine-based plagiarist. Just regurgitating. The notion of "intelligence" suggests that it is taking data and drawing "conclusions". So it is taking the raw data and making qualified conclusions about what the data may imply or suggest.
  
  So, in making "assumptions" and drawing conclusions, it doesn't know enough to detect its own BS. It is not advanced enough to know when it is babbling. By default, some of the babbling is correct, most information cannot be properly digested/processed by the program.
  
  Google "AI hallucinations" for more details.
  
  Humans do something similar, sometimes called Dunning-Krueger. Characterized by the maxim, "Just enough information to be dangerous". A good example is the word-salad that Trump produces because he doesn't understand 1/10 of what he is told, but must simply make do. And needs to act authoritative. lol
  
• DrVenture

  July 3

  I might add that AI is still very early stages. Just like software can take inputs from all of a cars sensors and manage to drive the car in certain well-mapped locales. You might be fooled into thing that an actual human was at the wheel. Until something unexpected happens and the car turns onto the train tracks. And self-driving is a very specific function. A one-trick operation, so to speak. AI is expected to be able to do almost anything, if properly designed.
• DrVenture

  July 3 edited July 3

  NumbersGal said:

  ... If it makes you feel better, Socrates (no less!) objected to writing because he felt that would undercut our ability to remember things ...

  This is funny because my son used to ask me why I didn't rely on the computer search function to find files on my PC. I told him that I preferred to exercise my memory and know where things were located in the file system. Not to become too lazy.
  
  To be fair, it was a bit OCD. Maybe Socrates was OCD? He certainly had no idea how much information that we would need to keep track of, at this point in time.
  
  
• Sven

  July 3

  Straightforward tasks such as finding files using keyword search has been around for a long time. These search engines do a decent job, but not all cases. If anything else is annoying is self-spell check when I write, that makes up words that sound familiar, but in correct in context.
  
  In my photo library, LightRoom took awhile to sort even I enter keywords (subject and location) when I processed the RAW files. The dates embedded in the meta files does not always work. Ai is enabled in Adobe Creative Suite and these is lots of complaints of artifacts being introduced. For now, I manually turned of the Ai capability for my use.
• DrVenture

  July 4 edited July 4

  The problem is that people like us, cannot type and watch the screen at the same time. Which can lead to all sorts of hilarity, as a result of auto-correct. I re-read everything that I type, sometimes twice. Auto-correct can be turned off on devices or in certain applications. Usually, spellcheck stays on and you choose what/how to fix things.
  
  People who can type without looking at their keyboard, don't have that problem.
• Old_Joe

  July 4

  "The problem is that people like us, cannot type and watch the screen at the same time. Which can lead to all sorts of hilarity, as a result of auto-correct. I re-read everything that I type, sometimes twice."
  
  Tell me!
• catch22

  July 4

  Hi @DrVenture and @Old_Joe Typing and the way back days for me. One class I chose in my sophomore year in HS was typing. I don't recall the motivation....meet more girls from my school ??? The class size was about 20 and I was the only male.
  Now this is 1963, so no electric typewriters. We used fully manual Remington units from my recall. The eventual goal was wpm (words per minute) without errors. We were provided a sheet of paper with a story. All of the normal stuff....paragraphs, various punctuations, capital letters, etc., etc. And then the teacher started the mechanical timer.
  SO, one is looking at the paper of what to type in a time frame, and NOT being able to watch what is being typed on your paper.
  I consistently became one of the best in the class.
  This skill served me over and over through the years.
  
  
  1957 'Quiet Writer Model video it's 7 minutes long, but one can skip along to various sections.
• DrVenture

  July 4

  @catch22 I totally get it. I agree that it is a useful skill. My son can type like the wind, he has degrees in Journalism and Computer Science. As you can imagine typing has served him well, too.
  
  I recall my dad having Royals and maybe a Remington. I played around with them, but was truly horrible at it.
• Sven

  July 4

  @catch22, I have had similar experience to yours learning to type in high school. It was a life long skills that helpful me to get through college and everything I do today. I even learn to type with my thumbs pretty well on my phone. Who say you cannot teach old dogs new tricks.
• Old_Joe

  July 4

  Same here. Man, what a bunch of old farts around here.
• Sven

  July 4 edited July 4

  Experienced old farts, that is!
• Derf

  July 4

  I also took typing, But two years later was toting a rifle in basic training. No I didn't become a company clerk. Light air defense man. So now I peck away one finger at a time.
  Hope all had a quite 4/th, Derf
• Sven

  July 4 edited July 4

  My kids never took formal touch typing and they too type with 2 fingers. Boy, are they fast. They learn to adopt pretty well. Texting fast with 2 thumbs is something to see.
• Old_Joe

  July 4

  Kinda puts the old expression "he's all thumbs" in a different perspective.
• WABAC

  July 5

  DrVenture said:

  NumbersGal said:

  ... If it makes you feel better, Socrates (no less!) objected to writing because he felt that would undercut our ability to remember things ...

  This is funny because my son used to ask me why I didn't rely on the computer search function to find files on my PC. I told him that I preferred to exercise my memory and know where things were located in the file system. Not to become too lazy.
  
  To be fair, it was a bit OCD. Maybe Socrates was OCD? He certainly had no idea how much information that we would need to keep track of, at this point in time.
  
  

  If you "grew up" with DOS, or are a proficient user of LINUX today, then knowing where things are is normal. Windows hasn't strayed that far from the directory structure either. It's about as OCD as understanding how a file cabinet works. For the Apple users I know it does appear to be witchcraft.
  
  As for AI, most of the stuff I see on the internet is about the same as most of all of the rest of the stuff I see on the internet: Lots of noise, not much signal, more than a fair amount of bandwidth dedicated to pornography, and the more time you spend on it, the dumber you get. https://tech.co/news/another-study-ai-making-us-dumb
  
• WABAC

  July 5

  Derf said:

  I also took typing, But two years later was toting a rifle in basic training. No I didn't become a company clerk. Light air defense man. So now I peck away one finger at a time.
  Hope all had a quite 4/th, Derf

  Typing got my oldest brother out of guard duty at LBJ and into the history unit of the 18th MP Brigade. It must have been a snafu that he also happened to have a BA in history.
  
  
• Mark

  July 5

  @WABAC, Roger that. I was a carpenter, they turned me into a small engine mechanic and a shooter. Maybe fair as I had taken a break from forestry and wood science studies to enlist before the draft got me.
• WABAC

  July 5

  Mark said:

  @WABAC, Roger that. I was a carpenter, they turned me into a small engine mechanic and a shooter. Maybe fair as I had taken a break from forestry and wood science studies to enlist before the draft got me.

  Yeah, my brother enlisted in Colorado after he got his notice after he graduated. He hoped they'ld send him to Ft. Carson for basic. He froze his keester during a lovely summer at Ft. Ord.
• gman57

  July 5

  All I remember from my high school typing class was the teacher... wowzer. Long,loong, looooong time ago.
• Anna

  July 6

  More often than not, I get an AI result at the top of a GOOGLE search. I have wondered if the search results shown below this are prioritized in order of the source of the AI result. If so, it would add to ones ability to determine the credibility of the AI.
• NumbersGal

  July 7

  Google uses your past history to order the answers to your new search questions. For example, if you use TripAdvisor a lot, then when you search for restaurants near city X, then google will preferentially give TripAdvisor's page for that city at or near the top of the results. (The actual ranking is IP and there are people who make a living designing pages which come out near the top of the results.) This has both good and bad features - good if you really like and use certain sites, bad if you want some new ideas. If you want a search engine that doesn't do that (& maybe some more privacy) try using duckduckgo as your default search engine.
  The AI result you get at the top of the page can also be turned on and off, with the method to do so depending on your browser. I find them annoying, but opinions vary.
• NumbersGal

  July 7

  p.s. Spellcheck can also be turned off, at least in Word.
• Sven

  July 8 edited July 8

  This month Professor Snowball provided a very thoughtful commentary on the topic AI. References cited within the articles provide additional insights.
  https://mutualfundobserver.com/2025/07/july-1-2025/#more-20680
  
  https://cacm.acm.org/blogcacm/a-knockout-blow-for-llms/