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Bigger AI chatbots more inclined to spew nonsense — and people don't always realize

Artificial-intelligence models are improving overall but are more likely to answer every question, leading to wrong answers.
  1. Nicola Jones
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A minimalist illustration of a robot vomiting random letters.

Credit: Moor Studio/Getty

A study of newer, bigger versions of three major artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots shows that they are more inclined to generate wrong answers than to admit ignorance. The assessment also found that people aren’t great at spotting the bad answers.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-03137-3

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 26 September 2024: The original version of this story misquoted the word that Mike Hicks proposes to describe the inaccurate outputs of LLMs.

References

  1. Zhou, L. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07930-y (2024).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Hicks, M. T., Humphries, J. & Slater, J. Ethics Inform. Technol. 26, 38 (2024).

    Article  Google Scholar 

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