Why dictionary.com's word of the year is "hallucinate"

While most people might think of hallucinating as something that afflicts the human brain, Dictionary.com actually had artificial intelligence in mind when it picked "hallucinate" as its word of the year.

"Hallucinate" has entered the mainstream recently due to its link to the booming new technology behind apps like ChatGPT. The definition, when it comes to AI, means: "to produce false information contrary to the intent of the user and present it as if true and factual." Dictionary.com added the definition this year.

"Hallucinate as our 2023 Word of the Year encapsulates technology's continuing impact on social change, and the continued discrepancy between the perfect future we envision and the messy one we actually achieve," Grant Barrett, dictionary.com's lexicography head, said.

Why did dictionary.com pick "hallucinate" as its word of the year?

There was a 45% increase in dictionary lookups for "hallucinate" when compared to last year, according to the site. There was a similar increase in searches for the noun form "hallucination." Overall, there was a 62% year-over-year spike in dictionary lookups for AI-related words.

"Our choice of hallucinate as the 2023 Word of the Year represents our confident projection that AI will prove to be one of the most consequential developments of our lifetime," Barrett and Nick Norlen, dictionary.com's senior editor, said in a post. "Data and lexicographical considerations aside, hallucinate seems fitting for a time in history in which new technologies can feel like the stuff of dreams or fiction—especially when they produce fictions of their own."

Hallucinations are a common problem with AI, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told 60 Minutes earlier this year.

"No one in the field has yet solved the hallucination problems," Pichai said. "All models do have this as an issue."

Where did the word "hallucinate" come from?

Hallucinate derives from the Latin word ālūcinārī, meaning "to dream" or "to wander mentally," according to dictionary.com senior editor of lexicography Kory Stamper.

One of the first documented uses of the word hallucination in computer science dates back to a 1971 research paper, according to dictionary.com. The paper was about training computers to accurately "read" handwriting and output it. Hallucination and hallucinate began to appear in the context of machine learning and AI in the 1990s.

What other words did dictionary.com consider for word of the year?

Events from the year, including prominent and lengthy strikes, Canadian wildfires and noteworthy indictments, drove dictionary.com searches. The site had "strike," "wokeism," "indicted" and "wildfire" on its shortlist. It also considered "rizz," which was chosen by the Oxford University Press as its word of the year.

AI also influenced Merriam-Webster's word of the year for 2023, "authentic." According to Merriam-Webster, stories about AI and social media drove people to look up "authentic," which it defines as: "not false or imitation" and "true to one's own personality, spirit, or character" and a synonym of "real" and "actual."

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