You can make this up! ‘Hallucinate’
is Word of the Year

‘Prompt engineering’, ‘large language model’ and ‘GenAI’ are among the hundreds of new words and definitions added to the Cambridge Dictionary. But one stood out above all others, and Cambridge Dictionary has announced ‘hallucinate’ as the Word of the Year for 2023.

The news follows a year-long surge in interest in generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT, Bard and Grok, with public attention shifting towards the limitations of AI and whether they can be overcome.

AI tools, especially those using large language models (LLMs), have proven capable of generating plausible prose, but they often do so by using false, misleading or made-up ‘facts’. They ‘hallucinate’ in a confident and sometimes believable manner.

The Cambridge Dictionary – the world’s most popular online dictionary for learners of English – has updated its definition of hallucinate to account for the new meaning.

The traditional definition of hallucinate is “to seem to see, hear, feel, or smell something that does not exist, usually because of a health condition or because you have taken a drug”. The new, additional definition is:

“When an artificial intelligence (= a computer system that has some of the qualities that the human brain has, such as the ability to produce language in a way that seems human) hallucinates, it produces false information.”

AI hallucinations, also known as confabulations, sometimes appear nonsensical. But they can also seem entirely plausible – even while being factually inaccurate or ultimately illogical.

AI hallucinations have already had real-world impacts. A US law firm used ChatGPT for legal research, which led to fictitious cases being cited in court. In Google’s own promotional video for Bard, the AI tool made a factual error about the James Webb Space Telescope.

Wendalyn Nichols, Cambridge Dictionary’s Publishing Manager, said: “The fact that AIs can ‘hallucinate’ reminds us that humans still need to bring their critical thinking skills to the use of these tools. AIs are fantastic at churning through huge amounts of data to extract specific information and consolidate it. But the more original you ask them to be, the likelier they are to go astray.

“At their best, large language models can only be as reliable as their training data. Human expertise is arguably more important – and sought after – than ever, to create the authoritative and up-to-date information that LLMs can be trained on.”

The new definition illustrates a growing tendency to anthropomorphise AI technology, using human-like metaphors as we speak, write and think about machines.

Dr Henry Shevlin, an AI ethicist at the University of Cambridge, said: “The widespread use of the term ‘hallucinate’ to refer to mistakes by systems like ChatGPT provides a fascinating snapshot of how we’re thinking about and anthropomorphising AI. Inaccurate or misleading information has long been with us, whether in the form of rumours, propaganda, or ‘fake news’.

“Whereas these are normally thought of as human products, ‘hallucinate’ is an evocative verb implying an agent experiencing a disconnect from reality. This linguistic choice reflects a subtle yet profound shift in perception: the AI, not the user, is the one ‘hallucinating.’ While this doesn’t suggest a widespread belief in AI sentience, it underscores our readiness to ascribe human-like attributes to AI.

“As this decade progresses, I expect our psychological vocabulary will be further extended to encompass the strange abilities of the new intelligences we’re creating.”

Addressing hallucinations – if they can ever be fully fixed – may define the future success and uptake of generative AI.

2023 in words

Several other words experienced spikes in public interest and searches on the Cambridge Dictionary website. They included:

• implosion
  1) the act of falling towards the inside with force; 2) a situation in which something fails suddenly and completely
  
  The tragic case of the Titan submersible’s implosion led many to look up the definition.
• ennui
  a feeling of being bored and mentally tired caused by having nothing interesting or exciting to do
  
  The notorious French robber Rédoine Faïd blamed “ennui” for his helicopter jailbreak: “The ennui provoked the escape… My addiction to liberty has consumed me.”
• grifter someone who gets money dishonestly by tricking people.
  
  Public figures were controversially accused of being “grifters”, including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (by a Spotify executive) and Nigel Farage (by Coutts bank).
• GOAT
  abbreviation for Greatest Of All Time: used to refer to or describe the person who has performed better than anyone else ever, especially in a sport.
  
  The Qatar World Cup provoked new debates about who is the GOAT in football: Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, or one of the late greats like Pelé or Diego Maradona?

New words, new meanings

Cambridge lexicographers added more than 6,000 new words, phrases and senses in 2023 to the Cambridge Dictionary’s 170,000+ English definitions.

Beyond hallucinate, several additions reflect rapid developments in AI and computing, such as:

• prompt engineering
  in artificial intelligence, the process of designing prompts that will give the best possible results
  
• large language modela complex mathematical representation of language that is based on very large amounts of data and allows computers to produce language that seems similar to what a human might say
• GenAI abbreviation for generative AI: the use or study of artificial intelligences that are able to produce text, images, etc.
• train in machine learning, to create or improve a computer representation of a system or process by supplying it with data
• black box a system that produces results without the user being able to see or understand how it works