I think “hallucinating” and “bullshitting” are pretty much synonyms in the context of LLMs. And I think they’re both equally imperfect analogies for the exact same reasons. When we talk about hallucinators & bullshitters, we’re almost always talking about beings with consciousness/understanding/agency/intent (people usually, pets occasionally), but spicy autocompleters don’t really have those things.

But if calling them “bullshit machines” is more effective communication, that’s great—let’s go with that.

To say that they bullshit reminds me of On Bullshit, which distinguishes between lying and bullshitting: “The main difference between the two is intent and deception.” But again I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say LLMs have intent.

I might say that LLMs hallunicate/bullshit, and the rules & guard rails that developers build into & around them are attempts to mitigate the madness.