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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

#251

Post by jgalt212 »

theoldgreybeard wrote: post #16

If a carpenter builds a crappy shelf “because” his power tools are not calibrated correctly - that’s a crappy carpenter, not a crappy tool. If a scientist uses an LLM to write a paper with fabricated citations - that’s a crappy scientist. AI is not the problem, laziness and negligence is. There needs to be serious social consequences to this kind of thing, otherwise we are tacitly endorsing it.

fair enough, but carpenters are not being beat over the head to use new-fangled probabilistic speed squares.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#252

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kibwen wrote: post #166
codywashere wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what regulation are you advocating for here?

At the very least, authors who have been caught publishing proven fabrications should be barred by those journals from ever publishing in them again. Mind you, this is regardless of whether or not an LLM was involved.

> authors who have been caught publishing proven fabrications should be barred by those journals from ever publishing in them again

This is too harsh.

Instead, their papers should be required to disclose the transgression for a period of time, and their institution should have to disclose it publicly as well as to the government, students and donors whenever they ask them for money.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#253

Post by codywashere »

rectang wrote: post #240
codywashere wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what regulation are you advocating for here?

I’m not advocating, I’m making a high-level observation: Industry forever pushes for nil regulation and blames bad actors for damaging use. But we always have some regulation in the end. Even if certain firearms are legal to own, howitzers are not — although it still takes a “bad actor” to rain down death on City Hall. The same dynamic is at play with LLMs: “Don’t regulate us, punish bad actors! If you still have a p…

so, what regulation do we need on LLMs?

the person you originally responded to isn’t against regulation per their comment. I’m not against regulation. what’s the pitch for regulation of LLMs?

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#254

Post by fao_ »

sansseriff wrote: post #236
bossyTeacher wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>LLMs can actually make up for their negative contributions. They could go through all the references of all papers and verify them, They will just hallucinate their existence. I have tried this before

I don’t see why this would be the case with proper tool calling and context management. If you tell a model with blank context ‘you are an extremely rigorous reviewer searching for fake citations in a possibly compromised text’ then it will find errors. It’s this weird situation where getting agents to act against other agents is more effective than trying to convince a working agent that it’s made a mistake. Perhaps…

> I don’t see why this would be the case

But it is the case, and hallucinations are a fundamental part of LLMs.

Things are often true despite us not seeing why they are true. Perhaps we should listen to the experts who used the tools and found them faulty, in this instance, rather than arguing with them that "what they say they have observed isn't the case".

What you're basically saying is "You are holding the tool wrong", but you do not give examples of how to hold it correctly. You are blaming the failure of the tool, which has very, very well documented flaws, on the person whom the tool was designed for.

To frame this differently so your mind will accept it: If you get 20 people in a QA test saying "I have this problem", then the problem isn't those 20 people.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#255

Post by jayess »

andy99 wrote: post #48
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an industrial electrician. A lot of poor electrical work is visible only to a fellow electrician, and sometimes only another industrial electrician. Bad technical work requires technical inspectors to criticize. Sometimes highly skilled ones.

I’ve reviewed a lot of papers, I don’t consider it the reviewers responsibility to manually verify all citations are real. If there was an unusual citation that was relied on heavily for the basis of the work, one would expect it to be checked. Things like broad prior work, you’d just assume it’s part of background. The reviewer is not a proofreader, they are checking the rigour and relevance of the work, which does…

Wow. I went to law school and was on the law review. That was our precise job for the papers selected for publication. To verify every single citation.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#256

Post by not2b »

andy99 wrote: post #48
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an industrial electrician. A lot of poor electrical work is visible only to a fellow electrician, and sometimes only another industrial electrician. Bad technical work requires technical inspectors to criticize. Sometimes highly skilled ones.

I’ve reviewed a lot of papers, I don’t consider it the reviewers responsibility to manually verify all citations are real. If there was an unusual citation that was relied on heavily for the basis of the work, one would expect it to be checked. Things like broad prior work, you’d just assume it’s part of background. The reviewer is not a proofreader, they are checking the rigour and relevance of the work, which does…

Agreed. I used to review lots of submissions for IEEE and similar conferences, and didn't consider it my job to verify every reference. No one did, unless the use of the reference triggered an "I can't believe it said that" reaction. Of course, back then, there wasn't a giant plagiarism machine known to fabricate references, so if tools can find fake references easily the tools should be used.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#257

Post by intended »

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?

The issue with this argument, for anyone who comes after, is not when you give a gun to a SINGLE person, and then ask them "would you do a bad thing".

The issue is when you give EVERYONE guns, and then are surprised when enough people do bad things with them, to create externalities for everyone else.

There is some sort of trip up when personal responsibility, and society wide behaviors, intersect. Sure most people will be reasonable, but the issue is often the cost of the number of irresponsible or outright bad actors.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#258

Post by grey-area »

theoldgreybeard wrote: post #16

If a carpenter builds a crappy shelf “because” his power tools are not calibrated correctly - that’s a crappy carpenter, not a crappy tool. If a scientist uses an LLM to write a paper with fabricated citations - that’s a crappy scientist. AI is not the problem, laziness and negligence is. There needs to be serious social consequences to this kind of thing, otherwise we are tacitly endorsing it.

Generative AI and the companies selling it with false promises and using it for real work absolutely are the problem.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#259

Post by acituan »

theoldgreybeard wrote: post #16

If a carpenter builds a crappy shelf “because” his power tools are not calibrated correctly - that’s a crappy carpenter, not a crappy tool. If a scientist uses an LLM to write a paper with fabricated citations - that’s a crappy scientist. AI is not the problem, laziness and negligence is. There needs to be serious social consequences to this kind of thing, otherwise we are tacitly endorsing it.

> AI is not the problem, laziness and negligence is.

As much as I agree with you that this is wrong, there is a danger in putting the onus just on the human. Whether due to competition or top down expectations, humans are and will be pressured to use AI tools alongside their work and produce more. Whereas the original idea was for AI to assist the human, as the expected velocity and consumption pressure increases humans are more and more turning into a mere accountability laundering scheme for machine output. When we blame just the human, we are doing exactly what this scheme wants us to do.

Therefore we must also criticize all the systemic factors that puts pressure on reversal of AI‘s assistance into AI’s domination of human activity.

So AI (not as a technology but as a product when shoved down the throats) is the problem.

Re: Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions

#260

Post by rdiddly »

theoldgreybeard wrote: post #16

If a carpenter builds a crappy shelf “because” his power tools are not calibrated correctly - that’s a crappy carpenter, not a crappy tool. If a scientist uses an LLM to write a paper with fabricated citations - that’s a crappy scientist. AI is not the problem, laziness and negligence is. There needs to be serious social consequences to this kind of thing, otherwise we are tacitly endorsing it.

¿Por qué no los dos?
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