Much has been said about the lack of accuracy of AI-generated texts. I’ve been asked repeatedly by reporters to comment on the observation that LLM-based AI “lies” and “hallucinates.” We endow machines with human qualities when we use such words. Yet, we cannot help ourselves. When we see or hear language, we instinctively imagine a human behind it. After BMW’s early mistake, car manufacturers are mindful that consumers disfavor certain voices in navigation systems. Consumers react strongly to age, gender, ethnic and other stereotypes—even though there really is no person inside the engine.
We instinctively react to human voice because we need to guess a speaker’s age, gender, height and size to match the person’s speech signal to the intended word. The physical output is highly variable across speakers, which is why the brain has to make these guesstimates to figure out what was said.
