Not a paradox. It plagiarizes because it isn’t capable of creating thoughts. It creates statistically likely combinations of tokens. Those “statistically likely” models were made by stealing a whole bunch of information.
The model hallucinates because it doesn’t actually know what any of the tokens mean, just that they exist in a likely probability space.
If you took two papers about a very similar subject, copied them both out in their entirety, then replaced similar phrases from one copy into the other, the resultant paper would both contain inaccuracies and would be plagiarism. That’s the same thing ai does, except the copies are the sum total of the digitized human written work. Increasing the number of sources you’re plagiarizing from doesn’t magically make it not plagiarism!
Imo, LLMs do have a purpose (and their ethical sourcing problems, like you mentioned).
It’s just that right now, Silicon Valley sells it as the answer to every single problem out there when it clearly isn’t. A hammer is good for putting nails in the wall. Silicon Valley claims you can also use it to do your toenails, gullible managers mandate its use for that purpose, and now the waiting rooms are chock-full with people with broken toes…
I don’t disagree. Most generative AI models are some variant on “plagiarism machine”, but categorizing and identifying data are extremely useful things that AI does.
LLMs are good at quickly generating code, but the issue in software is rarely how fast humans can write code. In fact, more speed with less understanding is a really bad combination (I am a developer working DevOps and anecdotally I see way more large scale bugs now than I did 5 years ago).
Agentic AI is, unfortunately, just an LLM pretending to be a person, and that’s a really bad thing. Like so incredibly bad. Did you know that humans are statistically more likely to make mistakes when under pressure? Cause the LLMs sure do. Create a narrative of pressure and the LLM cracks like a rotten egg. Cause that’s more statistically likely!
Hmmmm, not much actual use for the hallucinating plagiarism machine, but I do see your point.
The AI paradox: It’s both original (hallucinating) and plagiarizing (copying things, word-for-word).
Not a paradox. It plagiarizes because it isn’t capable of creating thoughts. It creates statistically likely combinations of tokens. Those “statistically likely” models were made by stealing a whole bunch of information.
The model hallucinates because it doesn’t actually know what any of the tokens mean, just that they exist in a likely probability space.
If you took two papers about a very similar subject, copied them both out in their entirety, then replaced similar phrases from one copy into the other, the resultant paper would both contain inaccuracies and would be plagiarism. That’s the same thing ai does, except the copies are the sum total of the digitized human written work. Increasing the number of sources you’re plagiarizing from doesn’t magically make it not plagiarism!
Imo, LLMs do have a purpose (and their ethical sourcing problems, like you mentioned).
It’s just that right now, Silicon Valley sells it as the answer to every single problem out there when it clearly isn’t. A hammer is good for putting nails in the wall. Silicon Valley claims you can also use it to do your toenails, gullible managers mandate its use for that purpose, and now the waiting rooms are chock-full with people with broken toes…
Also, AI can be so much more than just LLMs.
I don’t disagree. Most generative AI models are some variant on “plagiarism machine”, but categorizing and identifying data are extremely useful things that AI does.
LLMs are good at quickly generating code, but the issue in software is rarely how fast humans can write code. In fact, more speed with less understanding is a really bad combination (I am a developer working DevOps and anecdotally I see way more large scale bugs now than I did 5 years ago).
Agentic AI is, unfortunately, just an LLM pretending to be a person, and that’s a really bad thing. Like so incredibly bad. Did you know that humans are statistically more likely to make mistakes when under pressure? Cause the LLMs sure do. Create a narrative of pressure and the LLM cracks like a rotten egg. Cause that’s more statistically likely!