AI Hallucinations

I don't listen to NPR much anymore, but I still hear the occasional sponsor promo. 

One of them is for a corporation called C3AI, which caught my attention because it claims its AI product is "hallucination-free."

By implication, I guess that means the others all have hallucinations, which does appear to be the case. (It could well be the case with C3AI also, for all I know, however. The company appears to have been in search of a purpose since its founding in 2016; does that seem like a stable and reliable source to rely on?)

I've heard of a number of AI hallucinations (which are functionally the same as "errors" or made up "facts," also called "lies" if there is a motivation behind them). One was a statement that a Minnesota-based science fiction writer was married to a particular Minnesota nonfiction writer... who is in fact married to the former Minnesota state auditor. 

More recently, since Google has been rolling out its AI Overview this week, I've heard that it has proclaimed Barack Obama was the first Muslim president of the U.S., that UC Berkley geologists recommend people should eat at least one small rock per day, and that 25 U.S. presidents attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, including John Tyler, Andrew Jackson, and John F. Kennedy. Many of the years listed for the 19th century presidents were in the 20th century.

Tech companies are fond of setting money on fire while other companies are trying to set the world on fire. NFTs, crypto, and I know I've forgotten at least a few other scams du jour. 

Let's just keep building and connecting a clean electric grid while we stop building and rebuilding highways and see where it gets us.