http://programmer.ie/tags/selective-prediction/ Recent content in Selective Prediction on Programmer.ie: Modern AI programming Hugo en-us Sun, 30 Aug 2026 11:15:00 +0100 http://programmer.ie/books/hallucination-from-first-principles/11-chapter/ Sun, 30 Aug 2026 11:15:00 +0100 http://programmer.ie/books/hallucination-from-first-principles/11-chapter/ <p>Chapter 10 ended with an ambiguity.</p> <p>A model gave weak, generic advice.</p> <p>Perhaps it ignored decisive evidence.</p> <p>But perhaps the evidence never justified a decisive answer in the first place.</p> <p>Those are not the same failure.</p> <p>Consider this question:</p> <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" style="color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4;"><code class="language-text" data-lang="text"><span style="display:flex;"><span>What was Company A&#39;s Q3 revenue? </span></span></code></pre></div><p>and this evidence:</p> <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" style="color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4;"><code class="language-text" data-lang="text"><span style="display:flex;"><span>Q1 revenue was $41.2 million. </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>Q2 revenue was $43.8 million. </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>The company expects second-half demand to improve. </span></span></code></pre></div><p>A language model can easily produce something that sounds reasonable:</p>