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Spotting Hallucinations, Bias & Fact Verification
Staying Safe in an AI-Driven World
While LLMs are immensely capable, they have critical limitations that every user must understand.
What is an AI Hallucination?
A hallucination occurs when an LLM confidently generates false, fabricated, or non-existent information (such as fake court cases, non-existent code libraries, or incorrect historical facts).
Warning
LLMs do not know what they do not know. They generate words based on probabilistic fit, not truth verification!
Golden Rules for AI Verification
- Never Trust Unverified References: Always check cited links, package names, or legal cases independently.
- Require Citations & Primary Sources: Ask the model "Provide official documentation URLs for any APIs referenced."
- Use Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) / Grounding: Provide authoritative source documents in your prompt and instruct the AI: "Answer ONLY based on the provided text."
- Be Aware of Training Data Cutoffs: Standard models may not know about events or software updates that occurred after their training date.