Google's Gemini chatbot
AI Helps with Technical Issues
Amazing Free "Deep Research" AI
Four Cool AI Gadgets
My Shaver Has Bluetooth
AI Can Help You Shop
AI Can Now Reason
AI Answers Your Questions
Free Photo and Image Editing
Environmental Issues Related to AI
Use AI to Search Your Computer
Voice Conversation with a Chatbot
The Danger of Deep Fakes
ChatGPT Tells Chicken Jokes
Three Free Chatbots
Electric Cars Are Cool Gadgets
Google Launches Bard AI
Temu: Low Prices, Free Shipping
Multimodal Artificial Intelligence
Artificial General Intelligence
Surprising Abilities of AI
Great AI Tools Online
ChatGPT Plus Offers Plugins
Dangers of Artificial Intelligence
ChatGPT Answers Medical Questions
ChatGPT Passes Bar Exam
Backlash Against Generative AI
Generative AI Is a Game-Changer
ChatGPT Is Launched
Crypto & the Metaverse Have Flopped
The Best AI Image Generators
Chat with Facebook's Blenderbot
Zoom Videoconferencing, AI Text Generation
AI Image Generator DALL-E
Robots Now Serving in Restaurants
The Government's Broadband Subsidy
The Utility of Local Facebook Groups
Two Fun Online Games
Cryptocurrency Finance
James Webb Telescope
Nonfungible Tokens Are Bizarre
Cheap Gadgets I Love
Why You Need a Password Manager
The Metaverse Is Coming!
Elon Musk's 42,000 Satellites
Free Cell Phone Service
Amazon's Cashierless Stores
Facebook Knows What You're Thinking
Tools for Avoiding Scams
I Love My Vaccine
Dangers of Social Media
Free Online Tools
Internet Aids US Insurrection
Artificial Intelligence Gets Real
Confessions of an Internet Addict
My New Toys: Trail Cameras and a Drone
Trump Bans TikTok
Donating Online to Food Pantries
The Internet's Dark Side
Championing Factual News
Coronavirus News Sources: Keeping Up With Daily Developments
Zoom and Other Tools in the Time of Coronavirus
Avoiding Fakes & Frauds on Amazon
Best Fact-Checking Websites
Free Streaming Video Sites
New Streaming Video Services
Best and Low-Cost Earbuds
Beware of Deep Fake Videos
My Hearing Aids Are Cool
The Equifax Settlement
How to Defeat Dynamic Pricing
Google and Facebook Privacy Controls
Don't Be Fooled by Fake Reviews
Don't Be Fooled by Scams
Cameras Are Watching You
HasYour Password Been Hacked?
Is Artificial Intelligence Our Doom?
Voice-Controlled Gadgets
Personal Outsourcing
This Is Cyberwarfare
The Post-Truth Era
Introduction to Blockchain
Carmageddon Is Here
Mobile Payments and Deposits
Welcome to Surveillance Capitalism
Great Websites for Cheap Products
Honoring Fred Rosenberg
The Cyrptocurrency Craze
Voice-Controlled Assistants
Dealing with a Future Without Jobs
Why You Need a Virtual Private Network
How Do You Feel About Being a Cyborg?
Why Artificial Intelligence Is Scary
Google Lens, Amazon Echo, and More Toys
Algorithms Are Us
Best Ways to Spot Fake News
More Options for Cable Cutters
Artificial Intelligence & Neural Nets
Beware of Fake News
Amazon Echo Dot
Driverless Cars Coming Soon
Governments Approve Commercial Drones
The Sharing Economy in Southeastern Iowa
Ad Blocker for Your Web Browser
Virtual Assistants: Siri, Cortana, Alexa
Google Cardboard: Cheap Virtual Reality
Periscope Addiction
Pet, Kid, Keychain Traciers
Google Tips and Tricks
Use Price Alerts to Save Money
Best Gadgets of 2015
Apple TV, Streaming Video Devices
My Favorite Email Newsletters
Peer-to-Peer Lending
3-D Printing
Chromebook, a $150 Laptop
Periscope: Live Video from Around the World
Get Your Questions Answered on Quora
Sling TV — $20 per Month
The Drone Revolution
Bitcoin Mining Flop
Smart Light Bulbs
Revolutionary Apple Watch
Smart Home Gadgets
Buying a Bitcoin Miner
Traveling with Siri
The Sharing Economy: Uber, Airbnb
Storing Your Music in the Cloud
The Internet of Things
Life in Cloud Heaven
2013 Tablet Buyers Guide
What Marketers Know About You
Google Dashboard Knows About You
Stream Video with Google Chromecast
Big Data, NSA, and You
Google's Predictive Search
Bitcoin—Mint Your Own Money
Android Smart TV via $45 Mini PC
MOOCs: Quality Free Online Courses
Beware of Dynamic Pricing
Use Crowdfunding to Raise Money
Tablet Computer Buyer's Guide
Google's Self-Driving Car
Mobile Media/App Stores Compared
Google Nexus 7 vs iPad
Email Follies
Your Million-Dollar Smartphone
Google Drive: Free Cloud Storage
Free and Low-Cost Phone Calls
Google Glasses
Loving iCloud
iPad Wins, Other Tablets Lose
Siri is Revolutionary
Essentials of Computer Backup
Homage to Steve Jobs
Are Your Files Safe in the Cloud?
Amazing Uses of iPhone Camera
Use Carbonite Online Backup
Cloud Services Roundup
Tablet Computer Roundup
Project Watson Wins at Jeopardy
Stream Video by Connecting a Computer to Your TV
The Appeal of Apple TV
Roundup of Streaming TV Devices
Options for Streaming Video to a TV
Dealing with Cell Phone Radiation
Ebook Readers & Tablet Computers
Dreaming of 4G
Google TV
The iPad in Your Future
The Magic of Google Translate
iPhone: There's an App for That
3-D TV and Robots in Your Future
More Goodies from Google
Google Wave — Better than E-mail
Growing Up with the Internet
Bing: Better than Google
Google Voice — Great free service
The Twitter Revolution
Virtualization and You
Death of Newspapers
Netbook Computers
Great New Search Engines
Boxee — Free Online TV
Mozy — Free Offsite Backup
Amazon's Video-on-Demand
Wanting a Kindle
iPhone Love
Better than Google
Cloud Computing and MobileMe
Digg and Other Social Media Sites
Hulu.com: Free TV & Movies
Pandora: Best Source for Streaming Music
Cell Phones Changing
Intro to HDTV
Best Free Phone Resources
Free Online TV: Joost
Movies, TV Go Online
Scary Internet Stories
Facebook
The YouTube Election
Google Street View
Twitter, Twittervsion, and Flickervision fun
E-mail Tricks for Addicts
Cool PDA Phones
Webtop: Free Online Software
Useful Google Tidbits
My Yahoo, RSS, and Blogs
Google Earth
Online Videos
Web 2.0
Crowdsourcing
Virtual Worlds: Second Life
InTrade Predicts the Future
The MySpace Revolution
Wikipedia — A Free Encyclopedia
Wikipedia as Emergent Phenomenon
Wikipedia Lies
Free Calling with Skype
Intro to Podcasts
Intro to File Sharing: BitTorrent
Dangers of Wireless Hotspots
Google Maps
Free Online Credit Reports
Making Money with Your Web Site
Beware of Spoofing and Phishing
Free
Virus and Spyware Protection
Virus, Spyware
Protection -- Part 2
A Brief History of the Internet
The Gadget Goddess
Free Open Source Software
Keeping Your Mac Tuned Up
Starting a
Weblog
Getting Started with RSS
Latest Google Features
Selling on eBay
& Half.com
Safe Online
Shopping
Health-Related Web
Sites
Free Virus
Protection
Google
Culture
Online Photo
Sharing
Intro to GPS
Intro to Weblogs
Avoiding Spyware
Loving Google
News
Testing your
Internet Literacy
Urban Legends and
Hoaxes
Buying and Selling on
Half.com
Personalizing
Yahoo
Stopping
Spam
Useful New
Search Engines
Conspiracy
Theories
Online Nature
Guides
Intro to
Wireless
Yahoo Groups Are Fun
and Useful
The Joys of
Broadband
Free Expert
Help
Asking questions
online
Finding the lowest
price
Movie information
Online
Reference
Rebates
The Internet
bazaar
MP3 music
Noah's Ark and the
Internet
Link Rot
The Geek Report
About this site
Today's News and
weather
Hot tips
|
How To Deal With AI "Hallucinations"
July 2025
Knowing my enthusiasm for AI, an attorney friend emailed me a link to a New York Times article reporting on the tendency of a new artificial intelligence tool to fabricate—to simply make things up.
Experts found that this state-of-the-art prompting technique, called chain-of-thought reasoning, had "hallucination" rates for some tasks as high as 79% (but also improving accuracy on other tasks). Also, in the early days of chatbots, ChatGPT (chatgpt.com) made national news when an attorney reportedly submitted a legal brief that contained six citations to documents that didn't exist.
My friend wrote, "It's disappointing that I can't place much reliance on AI for academic research due to the significant risk it will provide wrong answers -- and that even the sources it cites may not actually be the correct citations. And I don't plan to let it do my writing. So it's currently of limited use to me."
As your tech enthusiast for the past 30 years, I am undaunted. I'm here to tell you that it's all just a misunderstanding. Seriously.
First of all, it's true that the Large Language Models at the heart of chatbots are not themselves able to establish veracity. They simply hoover up a gazillion words from the internet, train themselves to identify patterns by using "neural network" software, and then output plausible responses when prompted with a query. When ChatGPT first arrived in November of 2022, that's all it could do.
In addition, since it takes months for a Large Language Model to hoover up the words on the internet and learn the patterns, it doesn't typically have up-to-date information.
But then the tech overlords had the idea to also give LLM chatbots real-time access to the internet. That way they could enhance the programmatic output of LLMs with specific information found online—and even give you links to the sources. This is referred to as "retrieval augmented generation."
All the chatbots now have this and typically use it in response to your queries. ChatGPT, however, occasionally doesn't recognize that a particular prompt would benefit from internet access and might give an outdated or otherwise problematic response. I then ask it to reply again using the internet. Or I sometimes simply choose the "Search the Web" option when giving my prompt.
Claude AI (claude.ai) was the last major chatbot to integrate internet access, adding that feature in April.
Retrieval augmented generation makes it less likely that a chatbot would produce a legal document with fabricated sources.
Also, my attorney friend could feel more confident using a chatbot such as Perplexity (perplexity.ai), which includes citations with every answer and may be better than ChatGPT for academic-type queries where source traceability is key.
When I asked ChatGPT about this issue, it also suggested Semantic Scholar (www.semanticscholar.org), an AI-enhanced academic search engine focused on science and policy papers.
In addition, the newer AI models with "deep research" capability, which I have previously written about, typically do a better job of citing sources that one can then check. They can link to current articles, legal opinions, and journal papers. Rather than doing a quickie search, they do multiple iterations, continually probing deeper to give a well researched, comprehensive report.
As we've discussed, Perplexity gives five free deep research queries per day, while Google's Gemini (gemini.google.com) and ChatGPT give a limited number of free queries per month.
Experts aren't quite sure why the new chain-of-thought reasoning AI tool is having issues with hallucinating, but it's not likely that my attorney friend would have reason to use it. This tool is for users who need step-by-step problem solving in disciplines such as math, logic puzzles, and computer programming.
There continues to be a plethora of new AI tools to choose from, depending on your needs. ChatGPT, for example, now has something like 10 different options for ChatGPT Plus users.
I think you get the picture. AI has evolved, different options have different strengths, and choosing the right tool helps you get what you want.
Someone recently asked me which AI he might use to get information that could be helpful to a friend who has long-term nerve damage from a shingles infection. Since that's a straightforward issue that's been around a long time, it seemed like a simple ChatGPT search would meet his needs.
AI is a tool, and like any tool, it's good at some things and less capable at others. And like any tool, the key is to become familiar with it so that you can learn how best to use it. You begin to get a sense for when it might be hallucinating and needs to be double checked. And a sense for which tools are more apt to give you reliable, useful information.
Perhaps my lawyer friend will give AI a try and find it has some use. A deep research query on Perplexity would be a good place to start.
© 2025 by Jim Karpen, Ph.D.
E-mail
Jim Karpen
|
PayPal Fraud, Part 1
Internet Fraud, Part 2
Internet Fraud, Part 3
Suing My Credit Card Company
Bored.Com is fun
Guinness World Records
eHow.Com tells you
how
Free graphics
online
Cheap airfares
Simple, free money
transfer
Government
information
|
|