This is not a post about the widely publicized ChatGPT hallucinations, which appear to have been a momentary glitch, easily rolled back and resolved. This is something I experienced about a week earlier. I use ChatGPT primarily to help with programming questions — particularly those that are too general or broad to be easily searched on StackOverflow and the like. But occasionally, I get bored and try things just to see what will happen…
Last week I decided to go back to an exercise I had first tried about two years earlier, with an LLM on a different service. We played an imaginary game of blackjack.
Something surprising happened. ChatGPT tried repeatedly to “take over” as dealer, rather than waiting for me to announce the cards. I don’t know whether to categorize this as a “hallucination,” or just an unexpected result in an unscripted interaction.
I found the entire exchange fascinating and rewarding, at a deep and existential level. Next time, we’ll have to talk about Plato and the Cave.