AI Literacies

Are We Tripping? The Mirage of AI Hallucinations

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A photograph of mirages in a desert under a hazy light blue sky showing some distant outcroppings reflected in what looks like water beyond a sandy foreground.

Photo credit: “Mirage” by bobrayner, here cropped, is licensed via CC BY.

There is a deep disorder in the discourse of generative artificial intelligence, aka AI — or what I like to call sparkling intelligence, because everyone is using ✨✨✨ emojis and icons to signify AI. All joking aside, the disorder in AI discourse is the way everyone keeps talking about hallucinations when AI makes mistakes, leading us to anthropomorphize AI and imagine that AI both experiences reality and sometimes loses it. Anyone who knows how AI really works knows that’s wrong.