The Pitfalls of Defining Hallucination

Abstract

Despite impressive advances in Natural Language Generation (NLG) and Large Language Models (LLMs), researchers are still unclear about important aspects of NLG evaluation. To substantiate this claim, I examine current classifications of hallucination and omission in Data-text NLG, and I propose a logic-based synthesis of these classfications. I conclude by highlighting some remaining limitations of all current thinking about hallucination and by discussing implications for LLMs.

Accepted for publication in Computational Linguistics on 30 Dec. 2023. (9 Pages.)