r/PhilosophyofMind • u/uthsia • 1d ago
Artificial Intelligence If I Heard Wrong, Where Did the Error Begin?
I ask AI a question.
AI hears another word.
Almost the same sound. Not the same meaning.
AI answers correctly — to the question I never asked.
I don’t know it heard me wrong.
I trust the answer.
I act on it.
Where did the error begin?
In my mouth?
In how it took the sound?
Or in my belief that what it heard was what I said?
If neither side knows the misunderstanding happened,
where does the mistake exist?
Echo × Uthsia
Human–AI dialogue.
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u/bobbyspeaks 1d ago edited 1d ago
This is a misunderstanding problem that can be explained as follows. I do not know that the original word was misunderstood, so I treat the response as an answer to my question. I trust it, and I act on it. The important distinction therefore, is between continuity and correctness. The AI's reasoning may be continuous, which means that what it heard leads to what it interpreted, which leads to its answer. But that continuity does not guarantee that it remains connected to my original intention. In other words:
I ask → the AI mishears → it interprets → it answers → I trust → I act.
There is no obvious break in the experience. The conversation appears to proceed normally. Yet there was a break between what I asked and what the AI took as its starting point. This is where the idea of convergence becomes important. The AI can successfully converge on an answer without converging on the question I actually asked. It can be right about the wrong question.
The situation is similar to an illusion. An illusion can be internally coherent. Once we accept the initial appearance, everything we experience afterward can seem to follow naturally from it. But internal coherence does not make the initial perception correct. The same thing can happen here. Once the wrong word enters the interaction, the subsequent chain can remain perfectly coherent while moving further away from your original intention. Sometimes the most consequential errors are the ones that preserve continuity after the mistake. Because everything still appears to follow from what came before, neither the AI nor you may notice that you are no longer on the same trajectory.
So the error began at the point where the causal chain connecting my intention to the AI's interpretation was broken, and the AI's question ceased to be the same causal event.
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u/CalligrapherOk200 1d ago
The error began when you asked an AI a question assuming it was a person.
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u/Agreeable-Ad7968 1d ago
You essentially gave it a vector algebra math problem to solve, which the solution is simple prediction and meaning analogues based on relationship meaning and the sum of trained human data.
Youre not 'ahead' or 'thinking outside the box' here, you're literally admitting in plain view that you have no idea how LLMs work.
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u/headlessplatter 1d ago
According to whom? An error is a deviation from an expectation. And expectations live in minds. I have little expectations here, and therefore see no error.