mirage

Definition

A mirage is an apparent effect that dissolves once you change how you look at it, and in a title the word signals a debunking argument rather than a new method. The best-known use questions emergent abilities: swap a discontinuous metric such as exact match for a smoothly scored one and the sudden jump at scale flattens out. Papers like this attack the measurement procedure, not the underlying models.

Explainers using this term

• Paper Walkthrough: The Personalization Mirage — LLMs Invent a Version of You, and Their Self-Reports Point the Wrong WayThe Personalization Mirage: How LLMs Fabricate User Profiles, and Why Self-Monitoring Misleads