hallucination

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A sensory perception of something that does not exist, often arising from disorder of the nervous system, as in delirium tremens.

   “Hallucinations are always evidence of cerebral derangement and are common phenomena of insanity.”

   “The authorities said that the spinach had caused “possible food-related toxic reactions” with those affected experiencing symptoms including delirium, hallucinations, blurred vision, rapid heartbeat and fever.”

2. (countable, uncountable)The act of hallucinating; a wandering of the mind; an error, mistake or blunder.

   “This must have been the hallucination of the transcriber.”

3. (countable, uncountable)A confident but incorrect response given by an artificial intelligence; a confabulation.

   “Chatbots even forget that they are a bot and experience "hallucinations", Meta's description for when a bot confidently says something that is not true.”

   “Hallucinations are about adhering to the truth; when A.I. systems get confused, they have a bad habit of making things up rather than admitting their difficulties.”

   “It may tell you that the official currency of Switzerland is the euro (it’s actually the Swiss franc) or that Mark Twain’s Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County could not only jump but talk. A.I. researchers call this generation of untruths “hallucination.””

   “The hallucinations common to AI also came under fire in the suit for potentially damaging the value of the Times' reputation, and possibly damaging human health as a side effect. “A GPT model completely fabricated that “The New York Times published an article on January 10, 2020, titled ‘Study Finds Possible Link between Orange Juice and Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma,’” the suit alleges. “The Times never published such an article.””