eli5 : Why does ai like ChatGPT or Llama 3 make things up and fabricate answers?

Question

I asked it for a list of restaurants in my area using google maps and it said there is a restaurant (Mug and Bean) in my area and even used a real address but this restaurant is not in my town. Its only in a neighboring town with a different street address

In: Technology

Answer 1

Basically it asks itself “How would a human answer this question?” looking to it’s trainings data – which is all conversations online prior to 2022.

What that tells it is that a human would say something along the lines of “[male Italian name]’s Pizzeria”, “[Color] [Dragon, Tiger or Lotus] Restaurant”.

So it tells you that.
That’s what humans say when being asked for Restaurants.