When AI Makes Things Up (“Hallucinations”) the sorts of concerns we now hear about LLMs—including the societal dangers that ostensibly arise from a young technology’s errors and unpredictability—are not new. We humans always worry that ignorance and misperception threaten to overwhelm whatever sense of order we’ve managed to construct from the current regime of technology, power rela- tions, conventional wisdom, and expressed values. See, for example, Socrates, circa 370 BCE: Reid: Write some viral tweets from Socrates about the negative impact written communication will have on the world, correlating to the views attributed to him in Plato’s Phaedrus. GPT-4: Some possible viral tweets are: - Writing is a dangerous invention that weakens the memory and creates the illusion of wisdom. It is a mere image of speech, not a living and active soul. #ThinkBe- foreYouInk - The written word is a poor substitute for the spoken word. It cannot adapt to different audiences, contexts, or purposes. It cannot convey tone, emotion, or intention. It cannot correct, clarify, or elaborate. It is a rigid and dead letter. #SpeakYourMind - Writing is a form of forgetfulness, not of learning. It makes us rely on external signs, not on internal recollec- tion. It makes us lazy, not diligent. It makes us superfi- cial, not profound. It makes us ignorant, not knowledge- able. #RememberToRemember Of course, it’s not irrational to feel forever on the brink of intellectual anarchy. As countless surveys and studies attest, 155