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Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

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Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#121

Post by SauntSolaire »

imiric wrote: post #93
Forgeties79 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my calculator gives me the wrong number 20% of the time yeah I should’ve identified the problem, but ideally, that wouldn’t have been sold to me as a functioning calculator in the first place.

Indeed. The narrative that this type of issue is entirely the responsibility of the user to fix is insulting, and blame deflection 101. It's not like these are new issues. They're the same ones we've experienced since the introduction of these tools. And yet the focus has always been to throw more data and compute at the problem, and optimize for fancy benchmarks, instead of addressing these fundamental problems. Wor…

> It's not like these are new issues.

Exactly, that's why not verifying the output is even less defensible now than it ever has been - especially for professional scientists who are responsible for the quality of their own work.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#122

Post by skobes »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #70

After an interview with Cory Doctorow I saw recently, I'm going to stop anthropomorphizing these things by calling them "hallucinations". They're computers, so these incidents are just simply Errors.

Developers have been anthropomorphizing computers for as long as they've been around though.

"The compiler thinks my variable isn't declared" "That function wants a null-terminated string" "Teach this code to use a cache"

Even the word computer once referred to a human.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#123

Post by watwut »

skobes wrote: post #97
dclowd9901 wrote: post #28

To me, this is exactly what LLMs are good for. It would be exhausting double checking for valid citations in a research paper. Fuzzy comparison and rote lookup seem primed for usage with LLMs. Writing academic papers is exactly the _wrong_ usage for LLMs. So here we have a clear cut case for their usage and a clear cut case for their avoidance.

If LLMs produce fake citations, why would we trust LLMs to check them?

Because the risk is lower. They will give you suspicious citations and you can manually check those for false positives. If some false citation pass, it was still a net gain.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#124

Post by 19f191ty »

ulrashida wrote: post #102

Unfortunately while catching false citations is useful, in my experience that's not usually the problem affecting paper quality. Far more prevalent are authors who mis-cite materials, either drawing support from citations that don't actually say those things or strip the nuance away by using cherry picked quotes simply because that is what Google Scholar suggested as a top result. The time it takes to find these erro…

Exactly abuse of citations is a much more prevalent and sinister issue and has been for a long time. Fake citations are of course bad but only tip of the iceberg.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#125

Post by tpoacher »

scythmic_waves wrote: post #100
tpoacher wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but here the equivalent situation is someone using a greek question mark (";") instead of a semicolon (";"), and you as a code reviewer are only expected to review the code visually and are not provided the resources required to compile the code on your local machine to see the compiler fail. Yes in theory you can go through every semicolon to check if it's not actually a greek question mark; but one as…

> as a code reviewer [you] are only expected to review the code visually and are not provided the resources required to compile the code on your local machine to see the compiler fail. As a PR reviewer I frequently pull down the code and run it. Especially if I'm suggesting changes because I want to make sure my suggestion is correct. Do other PR reviewers not do this?

I do too, but this is a conference, I doubt code was provided.

And even then, what you're describing isn't review per se, it's replication. In principle there are entire journals that one can submit replication reports to, which count as actual peer reviewable publications in themselves. So one needs to be pragmatic with what is expected from a peer review (especially given the imbalance between resources invested to create one versus the lack of resources offered and lack of any meaningful reward)

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#126

Post by raincole »

baxtr wrote: post #35
gdulli wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying guns aren't the problem, the desire to shoot is the problem. Okay, sure, but wanting something like a metal detector requires us to focus on the more tangible aspect that is the gun.

If I gave you a gun would you start shooting people just because you had one?

If the society rewarded me money and fame when I kill someone then I would. Why wouldn't I?

Like it or not, in our society scientists' job is to churn out papers. Of course they'll use the most efficient way to churn out papers.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#127

Post by watwut »

MarkusQ wrote: post #68

This is as much a failing of "peer review" as anything. Importantly, it is an intrinsic failure, which won't go away even if LLMs were to go away completely. Peer review doesn't catch errors. Acting as if it does, and thus assuming the fact of publication (and where it was published) are indicators of veracity is simply unfounded. We need to go back to the food fight system where everyone publishes whatever they want…

Peer review was never supposed to check every single detail and every single citation. They are not proof readers. They are not even really supposed to agree or disagree with your results. They should check the soundness of a method, general structure of a paper, that sort of thing. They do catch some errors, but the expectation is not to do another independent study or something.

Passed peer review is the first basic bar that has to be cleared. It was never supposed to be all there is to the science.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#128

Post by peppersghost93 »

SauntSolaire wrote: post #108
judofyr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a bit unfair. The carpenters are (1) living in world where there’s an extreme focus on delivering as quicklyas possible, (2) being presented with a tool which is promised by prominent figures to be amazing, and (3) the tool is given at a low cost due to being subsidized. And yet, we’re not supposed to criticize the tool or its makers? Clearly there’s more problems in this world than «lazy carpenters»?

Yes, that's what it means to be a professional, you take responsibility for the quality of your work.

It's a shame the slop generators don't ever have to take responsibility for the trash they've produced.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#129

Post by [deleted] »

theoldgreybeard wrote: post #94
Forgeties79 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my calculator gives me the wrong number 20% of the time yeah I should’ve identified the problem, but ideally, that wouldn’t have been sold to me as a functioning calculator in the first place.

If it was a well understood property of calculators that they gave incorrect answers randomly then you need to adjust the way you use the tool accordingly.

[deleted]

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#130

Post by SauntSolaire »

gdulli wrote: post #64
baxtr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I gave you a gun would you start shooting people just because you had one?

That doesn't address my point at all but no, I'm not a violent or murderous person. And most people aren't. Many more people do, however, want to take shortcuts to get their work done with the least amount of effort possible.

> Many more people do, however, want to take shortcuts to get their work done with the least amount of effort possible.

Yes, and they are the ones responsible for the poor quality of work that results from that.

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