How to detect and deal with AI hallucinations

What does it mean when an AI hallucinates?

For many of us, AI has become an increasingly important part of our daily lives, and can help us become more productive, from providing quick answers to simple questions to generating complex texts. However, there is no guarantee that the content generated is completely accurate, and is therefore called AI hallucinations. So why does it occur?

Some of the most common causes of AI hallucinations are:

• Information overload
  When AI chat is fed large amounts of information, it can have difficulty understanding which parts are relevant. This can contribute to AI hallucinating and generating text that is incoherent and contains errors.
• Prompt complexity
  If your prompt or question is complex or unclear, AI chat may have difficulty finding relevant data and instead generate incorrect answers. And if the question can have several possible answer options, it may happen that the AI ​​creates information that tries to cover all possible answers, which can lead to pure guesswork.
• Incomplete training data
  With incomplete training data, the AI ​​chat can generate incorrect answers because it does not have enough relevant information, and therefore "guesses" or fills in gaps with information that is not correct. Something that can also happen if the AI ​​is presented with questions or topics that it has not seen before.

How do you detect AI hallucinations?

• Check sources
  By asking the AI ​​chat to refer to sources for the information it generates, you can more easily see if the information is based on credible facts. If it cannot provide any sources, it is especially important to fact-check the content with other experts in the field.
• Ask follow-up questions
  By asking follow-up questions, you can also more easily detect inconsistencies. If the AI ​​gives contradictory answers, it may be a sign of hallucination.
• Test different language models
  Comparing answers from different language models can also help you detect hallucinations. If you get similar answers, there is a greater chance that the information is correct. However, if the answers vary greatly, it may be a good idea to examine the information more closely.

How can the risk of hallucinations be minimized?

To minimize the risk of AI hallucinations, there are several strategies that companies can implement. One of the most effective methods is to integrate AI, such as ChatGPT, directly with their own data sources and business systems. This allows the model to retrieve updated and verified information in real time, which drastically reduces the risk of incorrect responses.

Another strategy is to use multiple LLMs in tandem, where different models review and validate chat responses before they are presented to the user. This system can act as an additional safety check that identifies potential errors or hallucinations generated by another model, which in turn ensures that the final result is as accurate as possible.

By combining these techniques, companies can create a more reliable and effective AI solution that not only improves the user experience, but also ensures that the information generated is both accurate and relevant.

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