A hallucinated new definition of AI

Due to Mistral 7b, not Rule 2001

In class earlier today, I demoed prompting LLM base models. Base models only autocomplete prompts using a large neural network model of language, rather than answering queries like a chatbot, so one needs to use various strategies to get responses out of them. One strategy is to start a definition, and have the model complete it.

Prompt: A good definition of artificial intelligence is

Five completions from Mistral 7b:

• the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs.
• ‘the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems’.
• hard to find.
• when a machine mimics human behavior.
• the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings.

My favorite so far is this one:

• "the collective attributes of being human" (Rule 2001).

The definition is intriguing, but the citation is hallucinated. There is no published paper by Rule (2001) that includes that phrase. Sometimes hallucinated quotes are simply attributed to the wrong author, but in this case, as far as I can find, the quoted phrase has never been used online or in print at all – no hits on Google Search, Google Scholar, Google Books, or JSTOR. At least, there were no hits until I just published it. So I'll credit this new definition of AI to Mistral 7b (2024).