Transformer模型的结构决定了它会幻觉,不是错误而是本质局限。
How Large Language Models are Designed to Hallucinate
- 将幻觉归因于架构本身:模型为追求连贯性而强行生成内容。
- 发现两种幻觉类型:存在性幻觉与推理痕迹幻觉,实验验证其在12个模型中普遍存在。
- 提出限制幻觉的设计方向,适合研究模型可信性与哲学基础的学者。
大型语言模型在语言和推理任务中表现出卓越流畅性,但系统性地易产生幻觉。现有解释多归因于数据缺失、上下文有限或优化偏差。本文认为,幻觉是变压器架构的结构性结果。作为连贯性引擎,变压器被迫生成流畅延续,其自注意力机制虽模拟意义关系,却缺乏时间性、情绪与关怀等人类理解的本体根基。据此,区分出两类幻觉:存在性幻觉(需揭示世界中的存在)与残余推理幻觉(复用文本中的人类推理痕迹)。通过契合海德格尔范畴的案例研究及在12个大模型上的实验,展示长提示下模拟“自我保存”现象的涌现。贡献包括:(1) 证明现有解释不足;(2) 提出基于存在结构的幻觉分类体系与基准;(3) 指出构建“真值约束”架构以实现拒绝或延迟披露的可能性。结论:幻觉并非偶然缺陷,而是基于变压器模型的定义性局限,架构支撑可掩盖却无法根除。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large language models (LLMs) achieve remarkable fluency across linguistic and reasoning tasks but remain systematically prone to hallucination. Prevailing accounts attribute hallucinations to data gaps, limited context, or optimization errors. We argue instead that hallucination is a structural outcome of the transformer architecture. As coherence engines, transformers are compelled to produce fluent continuations, with self-attention simulating the relational structure of meaning but lacking the existential grounding of temporality, mood, and care that stabilizes human understanding. On this basis, we distinguish ontological hallucination, arising when continuations require disclosure of beings in world, and residual reasoning hallucination, where models mimic inference by recycling traces of human reasoning in text. We illustrate these patterns through case studies aligned with Heideggerian categories and an experiment across twelve LLMs showing how simulated "self-preservation" emerges under extended prompts. Our contribution is threefold: (1) a comparative account showing why existing explanations are insufficient; (2) a predictive taxonomy of hallucination linked to existential structures with proposed benchmarks; and (3) design directions toward "truth-constrained" architectures capable of withholding or deferring when disclosure is absent. We conclude that hallucination is not an incidental defect but a defining limit of transformer-based models, an outcome scaffolding can mask but never resolve.
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