arXiv AI

The System Hallucination Scale (SHS): A Human-Centered Instrument for Assessing Perceived Reliability of Large Language Models

The System Hallucination Scale (SHS) is a lightweight, human-centered instrument designed to assess users’ perceived reliability of large language models across five dimensions: factual accuracy, source reliability, logical coherence, deceptiveness of presentation, and responsiveness to user guidance. It consists of ten balanced Likert-scale items modeled after the System Usability Scale and System Causability Scales, yielding a directional score and consistency diagnostic. In a supervised validation study with 193 participants, SHS showed strong internal consistency, high clarity, and took an average of 4.2 minutes to complete, revealing that users perceive source verifiability and presentation deceptiveness as more problematic than factual accuracy.

arXiv Computation and Language
Oct 21

Fluent but Fallible: Benchmarking Hallucination and Factual Reliability in Large Language Models

The paper "Fluent but Fallible: Benchmarking Hallucination and Factual Reliability in Large Language Models" evaluates ten advanced LLMs on a benchmark of 70 academic prompts across four complexity levels. Using five metrics—Accuracy, Precision, Recall, Response Deviation Index, and Hallucination Index—reviewers found that Perplexity and DeepSeek V3 achieved the highest overall accuracy, Gemini balanced recall and performance, LLaMA 3 resisted hallucinations, and Falcon had perfect precision but low recall and high deviation. The study highlights a trade‑off between response completeness and factual reliability, especially as prompt complexity increases.

By Osama Shabih, Dayam Nadeem, Shahab Saquib Sohail, Mohammad Nadeem
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 27

From Passive Response to Proactive Correction: Enhancing LLM Robustness Against Input Fact Perturbations

The paper introduces DEDUCE, a three‑stage framework that turns large language models into proactive error correctors by detecting input fact errors, devising correction strategies, and delivering reliable answers. It also presents MisFactQA, a dataset of factual errors, and new metrics for robustness evaluation. Experiments on TruthfulQA, FalseQA, and MisFactQA show significant gains in accuracy and error correction across Qwen, LLaMA, and Gemma models.

By Ping Wang, Xiangguo Sun, Bingbing Xu, Guocong Li, Xiaofeng Meng
arXiv AI
Aug 5

Quantifying Hallucinations in Language Language Models on Medical Textbooks

arXiv:2603. 09986v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Hallucinations, the tendency for large language models to provide responses with factually incorrect and unsupported claims, is a serious problem within natural language processing for which we do not yet have an effective solution to mitigate against.

By Brandon C. Colelough, Davis Bartels, Dina Demner-Fushman
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 18

An Analysis of Training-Free Self-Reported Confidence in Language Models

The paper investigates whether language models’ self-reported confidence is meaningful without additional training. By evaluating three training‑free signals—direct verbalization, post‑hoc probability estimates, and agreement across multiple generations—on 100 TriviaQA questions, the authors find that direct verbalization alone achieves high AUROC scores (0.956 and 0.937) for correctness prediction, while agreement-based methods perform noticeably worse. Re‑eliciting confidence for the same answers shows modest score shifts and occasional decision flips, and an audit of biography claims reveals only a small confidence gap between supported and contradicted statements.

By Lukas Meyer, Sofia Rossi, Wei Chen, Thomas Laurent, Yiming Li
arXiv AI
Sep 2

Validity-Aware Jailbreak Evaluation for Large Language Models

The paper introduces SEAV, a verification‑centric framework for evaluating jailbreak attempts against large language models. SEAV decomposes responses into ordered steps and checks both validity and correctness using LLM‑as‑a‑judge and retrieval‑grounded verification. The method reduces false positives by 14.9 percentage points on a strategic‑dishonesty diagnostic and reclassifies 22.1–51.0% of previously successful jailbreaks as invalid across multiple benchmarks.

By Qilong Wu, Sahil Wadhwa, Pranab Mohanty, Giri Iyengar, Varun Chandrasekaran