Software program engineers, builders, and educational researchers have severe considerations about transcriptions from OpenAI’s Whisper, in response to a report within the Related Press.
Whereas there’s been no scarcity of dialogue round generative AI’s tendency to hallucinate — principally, to make stuff up — it’s a bit stunning that this is a matter in transcription, the place you’d anticipate the transcript intently observe the audio being transcribed.
As an alternative researchers informed the AP that Whisper has launched all the pieces from racial commentary to imagined medical therapies into transcripts. And that may very well be notably disastrous as Whisper is adopted in hospitals and different medical contexts.
A College of Michigan researcher learning public conferences discovered hallucinations in eight out of each 10 audio transcriptions. A machine studying engineer studied greater than 100 hours of Whisper transcriptions and located hallucinations in additional than half of them. And a developer reported discovering hallucinations in almost all of the 26,000 transcriptions he created with Whisper.
An OpenAI spokesperson stated the corporate is “regularly working to enhance the accuracy of our fashions, together with lowering hallucinations” and famous that its utilization insurance policies prohibit utilizing Whisper “in sure high-stakes decision-making contexts.”
“We thank researchers for sharing their findings,” they stated.
