hallucination-bound-applies-only-to-arbitrary-facts-not-systematic

IN premise — summaries/2026/08/24/kalai-2023-hallucination-inevitable-s1-introduction.md

Created 2026-08-24T17:10:59+00:00

The Kalai-Vempala hallucination lower bound applies to arbitrary facts (5W factoids like one-off events) but explicitly excludes systematic facts (arithmetic, rule-governed logic) and frequently recurring references (book titles, citations) for which no such lower bound applies.

Summary

The theoretical floor on how often a model will spit out wrong one-off facts (like a specific date or a single event) does not extend to rule-governed reasoning like arithmetic or logic, nor to well-known references such as book titles and citations. In practice, this means the system should treat structured, rule-based answers and high-frequency references as far less error-prone than novel, isolated factual claims, and calibrate its confidence accordingly.