ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Confabulation (neural networks)

Confabulation in neural networks is when the brain makes up a story or explanation about something that it doesn't actually know or remember. It's kind of like a made-up story that the brain creates to fill in the gaps when it can't remember what actually happened.

Imagine you're playing a game of memory, and you can't remember where you put your toys. So your brain starts making up a story about how you put them in the toy chest, even though you don't actually remember doing that. That's confabulation.

In neural networks, confabulation can happen when the system is trying to understand or process information, but it doesn't have all the facts or data it needs. So it will make up a story or explanation based on the information it does have, even if that story is not entirely accurate or doesn't make sense.

For example, if a neural network is trying to identify pictures of animals but it's never seen a giraffe before, it might mistakenly classify it as a zebra because they both have stripes. This is a type of confabulation - the neural network doesn't have all the information it needs about giraffes to accurately identify them, so it fills in the gaps with what it does know.

Confabulation in neural networks can be a problem because it can lead to inaccurate predictions or decisions. This is why it's important to keep training and refining the system with more data and information, so that it can make better and more accurate predictions over time.