AI Hallucinations: Bad or Misunderstood?

OpenAI's new AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, has raised concerns about its tendency to output false yet plausible and coherent information. This phenomenon, known as hallucination, occurs when an AI model generates untruthful information on a closed-domain task. While hallucinations can lead to errors and offend in some cases, they also point towards AI that is not merely generative but potentially creative. Machine learning models are built around generalization, making the distinction between factual content and text structure, syntax, and delivery too fine for non-human models. Hallucinations have been used to generate MRI scans to supplement CT scans in lung tumor segmentation and improve autonomous navigation by hallucinating obstacles.