The problem of hallucinations in chatbots based on Large Language Models: an analysis from the perspective of the semantic theory of truth and the theory of quasi-truth

The so-called “hallucinations” of chatbots based on Large Language Models, like ChatGPT, are often defined as false or nonsensical outputs. We employ formal theories of truth, specifically Tarski’s semantic theory of truth and da Costa’s theory of quasi-truth, to provide clear criteria for determining if an output by a chatbot based on an LLM can be considered true or false, quasi-true or quasi-false, or neither. By doing so, we offer a clearer characterization of the problem of hallucinations in chatbots based on LLMs, more specifically regarding the Natural Language Generation task of Generative Question Answering. We conclude that hallucinations are inherent to the current LLM architectures and that a definitive solution to this problem would require the development of significantly more advanced models, capable of establishing not only probabilistic, but also logical relations between tokens and their grounded semantic counterparts.