Cambridge dictionary’s word of the year for 2023 is “hallucinate,” a verb that took on a new meaning with the rise in popularity of artificial intelligence chatbots. The Guardian reports: The original definition of the chosen word is to “seem to see, hear, feel, or smell” something that does not exist, usually because of “a health condition or because you have taken a drug.” It now has an additional meaning, relating to when artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT, which generates text that mimics human writing, “hallucinates” and produces false information. The word was chosen because the new meaning “gets to the heart of why people are talking about AI,” according to a post on the dictionary site.
Generative AI is a “powerful” but “far from perfect” tool, “one we’re all still learning how to interact with safely and effectively — this means being aware of both its potential strengths and its current weaknesses.” The dictionary added a number of AI-related entries this year, including large language model (or LLM), generative AI (or GenAI), and GPT (an abbreviation of Generative Pre-trained Transformer). “AI hallucinations remind us that humans still need to bring their critical thinking skills to the use of these tools,” continued the post. “Large language models are only as reliable as the information their algorithms learn from. Human expertise is arguably more important than ever, to create the authoritative and up-to-date information that LLMs can be trained on.”
