Recently, the world discovered that the language models hallucinate. This fundamental discovery proves that humans are indispensable.
But, are humans free of hallucinations?
Hmm, for one, humans absolutely love to make explanations.
Let’s start from the most primitive examples from the distant past. Lightning struck a tree nearby? A human will construct an explanation – the god of lightning is the cause. Lightning struck a human? Obviously, it was god who punished a sinner. Lightning nearly missed a human – naturally god saved them.
Those explanations do sound like LLM hallucinations quite a lot.
But these are too simple examples. At the end of the day, modern humans are not so superstitious. Modern humans are rational! Let’s look closely at them. And what is the best place to look for if not for the science of the human mind – the psychology.
Does the reader feel maybe a bit hungry now? Well, according to Freud it is because they want to rape their parents. On the other hand, according to Jung, it is because they are afraid of their shadow. According to behaviorists, it is because humans were conditioned to eat when they read. According to evolutionary psychologists, it is an evolved genetically programmed response from the time when human ancestors read while foraging to maximize reproductive opportunities. According to cognitive psychologists, it is because attention to text depletes glucose levels. According to social psychologists, it is because reading books signals intellectual status, as hunger emerges as a social pressure response to match perceived in-group eating habits of intellectuals. According to gestalt therapists, it is the human body’s holistic response to unfinished business. According to positive psychologists, hunger while reading is actually beneficial as it increases mindfulness. According to attachment theorists, it stems from early childhood experiences of being fed while learning letters…
Weird. A single phenomenon of feeling hungry has so many diverse explanations. And not just explanations, but explanations by the scientists of the mind themselves. What is worse, those explanations do sound like LLM hallucinations quite a lot.
Perhaps, psychology is a bad example. At the end of the day, it has a lot of historical legacy. Perhaps, we can look at what neuroscience tells us?
According to the common internet knowledge, when a human makes a decision, their brain makes the decision first. Then, a few moments later the human accepts this decision. When asked to explain why the decision was made, the human designs sophisticated rationalizations about why something was chosen.
What is interesting here, most humans have absolutely no idea why their brain chooses something or has some preferences. But, they can always confidently rationalize why they like/dislike something, why certain thing is true or false, or why their decision is always correct. One can bring a litany of human examples from everyday life, political stances, social stances, academic discourse, but the pattern is evident without them.
All of these human rationalizations are nothing more than hallucinations.
The recognition of human rationalizations is a recurrent topic in history and philosophy. Some people even go as far as to claim that making up rationalizations is the only thing humans excel at. But the core point remains. These LLM hallucinations are nothing new. Humans have been making them for millennia.