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this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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Everyone uses the word "hallucinate" when describing visual AI because it's normie-friendly and cool sounding, but the results are a product of math. Very complex math, yes, but computers aren't taking drugs and randomly pooping out images because computers can't do anything truly random.
You know what else uses math? Basically every image modification algorithm, including resizing. I wonder how this judge would feel about viewing a 720p video on a 4k courtroom TV because "hallucination" takes place in that case too.
Whenever people say things like this, I wonder why that person thinks they're so much better than everyone else.
Normie, layman... as you've pointed out, it's difficult to use these words without sounding condescending (which I didn't mean to be). The media using words like "hallucinate" to describe linear algebra is necessary because most people just don't know enough math to understand the fundamentals of deep learning - which is completely fine, people can't know everything and everyone has their own specialties. But any time you simplify science so that it can be digestible by the masses, you lose critical information in the process, which can sometimes be harmfully misleading.
It’s not just the media who uses this term. According to this study which I’ve had a very brief skim of, the term “hallucination” was used in literature as early as 2000, and in Table 1, you can see hundreds of studies from various databases which they then go on to analyse the use of “hallucination” in.
It’s worth saying that this study is focused on showing how vague the term is, and how many different and conflicting definitions of “hallucination” there are in the literature, so I for sure agree it’s a confusing term. Just it is used by researchers as well as laypeople.