When the robot gets it wrong
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What you will learn
By the end, you can explain two ways AI answers go wrong and check an answer before you use it.
Rui asks a homework helper: "How many moons does Mars have?" The AI answers: "Mars has 3 moons: Phobos, Deimos and Ares." It sounds sure. Rui checks a space agency page: Mars has two moons. The third was invented, and the AI never said it was unsure.
Read the explanation
AI predicts what a good answer usually looks like. When it does not know, it can still give a confident answer with made-up names, dates or facts: a hallucination. It also learns from data made by people, so one-sided examples give one-sided answers: bias. Neither mistake comes with a warning, so a human must check.
- Sounding sure is not the same as being right.
- Ask: where would this fact be checked? A textbook, an official site, a library.
- Use AI as a helper for ideas, not as the final judge.