What is Hallucination?
A hallucination is an answer an AI gives confidently, but that is made up or wrong.
AI keeps guessing the most likely continuation. That lets it tell you, with full confidence, something that is simply not true: a made-up source, a wrong number, a name that does not exist. That is a hallucination. It is not lying, because the program does not even know it is wrong. It just always sounds equally sure.
This is the main reason to always check AI answers, especially names, numbers, sources and facts. A confident tone says nothing about whether it is right.
Put precisely
The model does not make a mistake it can notice itself. It works out which word is likely to come next and has no way to check whether the result is true. A made-up answer and a correct one come about in exactly the same way.
Common misconception
That an AI will say so if it does not know something. It cannot: it does not know what it does not know.
Read the full lesson: Waarom verzint AI soms dingen? →
Related words
Understand AI, calmly
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