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LLMs Will Always Hallucinate, and We Need to Live with This (arxiv.org)
4 points by kvee on Sep 12, 2024 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: Using results from logic about problems no computer can always solve, the analysis argues every step of a language model — from gathering training text to writing an answer — can make things up. Better data, designs, or fact-checking can reduce this but never remove it.

Abstract · LLMs Will Always Hallucinate, and We Need to Live With This

As Large Language Models become more ubiquitous across domains, it becomes important to examine their inherent limitations critically. This work argues that hallucinations in language models are not just occasional errors but an inevitable feature of these systems. We demonstrate that hallucinations stem from the fundamental mathematical and logical structure of LLMs. It is, therefore, impossible to eliminate them through architectural improvements, dataset enhancements, or fact-checking mechanisms. Our analysis draws on computational theory and Godel's First Incompleteness Theorem, which references the undecidability of problems like the Halting, Emptiness, and Acceptance Problems. We demonstrate that every stage of the LLM process-from training data compilation to fact retrieval, intent classification, and text generation-will have a non-zero probability of producing hallucinations. This work introduces the concept of Structural Hallucination as an intrinsic nature of these systems. By establishing the mathematical certainty of hallucinations, we challenge the prevailing notion that they can be fully mitigated.

Sourav Banerjee, Ayushi Agarwal, Saloni Singla
arXiv:2409.05746 · stat.ML, cs.LG · submitted Sep 9, 2024
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