Whisper is a popular transcription tool powered by artificial intelligence, but it has a major flaw. It makes things up that were never said.

Those experts said some of the invented text — known in the industry as hallucinations — can include racial commentary, violent rhetoric and even imagined medical treatments.

  • dustbunnies [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    27·
    3 days ago

    as much as the speech-to-text gets wrong on my phone, I can only imagine what it does with doctors’ notes.

    one of my million previous jobs was in medical transcription, and it is so easy to misunderstand things even when you have a good grasp of specialty-specific terminology and basic anatomy.

    they enunciate the shit they’re recording about your case about as well as they legibly write. you really have to get a feel for a doctor’s speaking style and common phrases to not turn in a bunch of errors.

    But Whisper has a major flaw: It is prone to making up chunks of text or even entire sentences, according to interviews with more than a dozen software engineers, developers and academic researchers. Those experts said some of the invented text — known in the industry as hallucinations — can include racial commentary, violent rhetoric and even imagined medical treatments.

    internet-delenda-est

    Edit: oh yeah, ✨ innovation ✨

    While most developers assume that transcription tools misspell words or make other errors, engineers and researchers said they had never seen another AI-powered transcription tool hallucinate as much as Whisper.

    Edit 2: it gets better and better

    In an example they uncovered, a speaker said, “He, the boy, was going to, I’m not sure exactly, take the umbrella.”

    But the transcription software added: “He took a big piece of a cross, a teeny, small piece … I’m sure he didn’t have a terror knife so he killed a number of people.”

    A speaker in another recording described “two other girls and one lady.” Whisper invented extra commentary on race, adding “two other girls and one lady, um, which were Black.”

    In a third transcription, Whisper invented a non-existent medication called “hyperactivated antibiotics.”

    Edit 3: wonder if the Organ Procurement Organizations are going to try to use this to blame for the extremely fucked up shit that’s been happening