Re: Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done?

On Tue, 19 May 2026 12:11:32 -0400, Jonathan Lamothe
<[email protected]> wrote:

>Steve Hayes <[email protected]> writes:
>
>> On Mon, 18 May 2026 14:54:41 -0400, Jonathan Lamothe
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>>John Ames <[email protected]> writes:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, 18 May 2026 10:46:11 -0400
>>>> Jonathan Lamothe <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I have never seen an actual definition if what AI *is*.
>>>>
>>>> That's because when you say "a program that does auto-complete using a
>>>> large context window as an index to a *very* large reference dataset,
>>>> but it plays dice according to the statistical likelihood of a given
>>>> word-chain in the reference data" it starts to sound kinda silly and
>>>> unreliable.
>>>
>>>I'd say that's more the definition of an LLM.  The term "AI" *vastly*
>>>predates LLMs.
>>
>> And is not really accurate when applied to LLMs. 
>
>What, specifically, would you say is inaccurate about it?

LLMs are not "intelligent"; they do not "understand" the data they are
dealing with, even though their programers sometimes like to give them
the appearance of doing so. 


-- 
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web:  http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk