Scientists Develop New Algorithm to Spot AI 'Hallucinations'

An enduring problem with today's generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, like ChatGPT, is that they often confidently assert false information. Computer scientists call this behavior "hallucination," and it's a key barrier to AI's usefulness. Hallucinations have led to some embarrassing public slip-ups. In February, AirCanada was forced by a tribunal to honor a discount that its customer-support chatbot had mistakenly offered to a passenger. In May, Google was forced to make changes to its new "AI overviews" search feature, after the bot told some users that it was safe to eat rocks. And last June, two lawyers were fined 5,000 by a U.S. judge after one of them admitted he had used ChatGPT to help write a court filing.