Exploring the Potential Benefits of Artificial Intelligence-Based Illusions
“In Defense of AI Hallucinations”
“‘Artificial Intelligence systems are teaching themselves to do more and more with less and less human intervention,” Wired’s Clive Thompson says in his latest piece. So true, Clive. Just when humanity thought they were losing the grip on their shiny gadgets, Artificial Intelligence (AI) steps in.”
Now, aren’t we all enamored by the concept of Artificial Intelligence? Of course, who wouldn’t be? It promises to make our lives easier, right? Apparently, AI is planning on becoming the ultimate sous-chef, helping draft speech notes, even writing that tedious high school essay that’s been looming over our heads.
And let’s not forget about the AI-powered chatbots. There’s GPT-3, for instance. You can type out a message in English, and boom! It gets translated into French, Chinese, or whatever other language you fancy. It looks like Babel fish slides down the rank now.
The elegance behind its functioning lies in its inherent capacity, known as an autoencoder. It allows GPT-3 to convert sentences into mathematical representations and harness them later to generate responses. Imagine having a mini mathematician sitting inside every device, making sense of the gibberish we type.
Well, it’s not all rainbows and sunshine. There are some murmurs about the oddities that come along with AI. Apparently, it makes a few ‘hallucinations.’ It invents things that aren’t there, weaves its fantasies or has its interpretation of our sentences. But, come on! Isn’t it easier to blame a machine for a faux pas than admit to our shoddy typing skills?
History isn’t devoid of human-induced inadvertent consequences either. Kindly recall the Millennium bug that disrupted the Y2K turn. It was a human error, right? Yet, we didn’t pack up our computers in fear then. Instead, we sorted it out. So maybe, it is time to cut some slack on AI for its minor hallucinations. After all, no technology is perfect. And there are always ways to improve, right?
So, let’s keep pushing. Let’s allow AI to glitch occasionally, just like when we leave our coffee mugs on our roofs and drive away. It’s part of the process. But remember, it’s always how we handle the accidents that define us. Or, in this case, how we program our AI systems.
There you have it. AI is not the bad guy. It’s just a new, shiny gadget that we’re still learning to use. And if it hallucinates sometimes, just remember – so do we. And arguably, we’ve been doing it for a lot longer.