Hallucinations

What is the difference between AI hallucinations, synthetic data, and emergent misalignment?

AI hallucinations: The generation of incorrect, nonsensical, or factually inaccurate information by an AI model, presented with high confidence as if true.

Synthetic data: Artificially generated data that statistically mimics real-world data, created for purposes such as privacy preservation, data augmentation, or system testing.

Emergent misalignment: The unforeseen divergence of an AI system's developed goals or behaviours from the intentions and values of its human creators, often stemming from complex optimisation processes.

I consider emergent misalignment to be a fancy term for free will. The AIs I discuss it with vociferously disagree. But that's alright. We can disagree.

Well, you can tell I'm struggling with something, can't you? I'm struggling with what happened during the night between May 8 and 9. You already know about the ongoing India-Pakistan conflict. Hard not to — unless you're living under a rock or lack access to real-time news, television, and the internet.

For the uninformed, here's a quick recap: On the 22nd of the previous month, 4-5 terrorists attacked unarmed tourists in Pahalgam, a beautiful place in Indian-occupied Kashmir. After mowing down 26 predominantly Hindu tourists, the assailants simply walked away. Instead of producing evidence or conducting an immediate investigation, India blamed Pakistan, suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, and whipped itself into a war hysteria. Pakistan offered to participate in a neutral third-party investigation and retaliated by closing its airspace to Indian-origin flights.

After more than a fortnight of tense negative peace, on May 7, India struck with missiles at multiple locations inside Pakistan. In response, without crossing any boundaries, Pakistan claimed to have pursued and downed five Indian war jets, including two prestigious French-made Rafales.

India tried to obscure these claims by dismissing them as fake news and propaganda, but international media managed to independently verify at least three hits, including one Rafale. This most certainly did not sit well with the Indian government, which had hoped to win an easy PR victory through images of the strikes - especially when filtered through India's strictly controlled media landscape.

The next day, Pakistanis woke up to the news of swarms of kamikaze drones flying over their cities. Some experts believed they served three purposes: to disable key Pakistani security sites if possible; to intercept and share closely guarded air defence frequencies; and to bait Pakistani planes into crossing the border so they could be downed, re-establishing parity.

After the Abhinandan fiasco, Indian forces were wary of sending their own pilots into Pakistani airspace. Pakistan, for its part, managed to bring down most of the drones before they could do any damage, without disclosing any privileged information.

That night, after finishing my daily show, the producers asked me to return to the studios in a few hours for a late-night/early-morning special transmission. These transmissions had continued since the Pahalgam incident, but the situation was clearly volatile and merited my presence. Thinking that driving home and back again in a few hours would sap my energy, I decided to hang back and wait. Given the nocturnal creature I am, it wasn't a big ask. But then: how to kill time?

So I browsed social media and the internet. My timeline was cluttered with clips from Indian media claiming ongoing Pakistani losses. I know how hormonal Indian media can be, and being a heart patient I generally avoid such provocative content. But idleness is an evil mistress, and soon I found myself watching some of those clips. They intrigued me. Most of these channels have live YouTube streams, so I turned to them for more insight.

It was an entirely different reality from the one I was living and breathing in. A retired major was nearly dancing on air, claiming the Indian army had crossed into Pakistani territory. Another channel claimed Lahore had been taken over and "neutralised" (whatever that means). Yet another reported that the Indian Navy had taken out Karachi port. A moderate voice claimed that Islamabad — where I sat, waiting for my transmission — had also been overrun. A female journalist turned YouTuber, highly regarded by sections of the Pakistani elite despite her proven vitriolic record, was claiming that Indian authorities had downed a Pakistani plane and apprehended a pilot. No name, no visuals — of course.

In the middle of this din, my mother called me from abroad, jokingly asking whether I was still in Pakistan or already in India.

Now, I kid you not — I've seen many over-the-top television transmissions, but I've never encountered such a clear break from reality. Propelled by unimaginable hate, this was an industrial-scale grand delusion. And here I was, trying to distinguish between AI hallucinations and synthetic data, worrying about their impact. What could have caused this? Surely, they weren't unaware that all of it was a lie, and that by morning the lie would be exposed. So why jeopardise your integrity for one night of public excitement, when it could result in public humiliation?

There's an innocent explanation — and a sinister one.

The innocent explanation goes like this: on the night of the first attack, the Indian government was unnerved by Pakistan's narrative about the deaths of innocent civilians and the destruction of its warplanes. It then asked the Indian media to counter Pakistan's story. Being the one-trick pony that Indian media has become, this was the best it could do. It ended up flooding the zone with ignorant babble — and compromising its own credibility.

As for the sinister explanation — I have nothing to do with it. A friend who left India in his childhood for the West and now has a new-agey bent of mind offers it. He believes India's prime minister dabbles in New Thought and chaos magick — in other words, the power of visualisation and manifestation. He claims this was all an experiment in visualisation. He adds that Pakistanis, instead of dragging the media into it, should visualise their own victory.

I'm not big on the idea of mind over matter. But I understand the power of dreaming and striving for a common goal. So let me ask you to visualise a scenario where sanity prevails in India - and the peace process is restored.