Hallucination triggering

How it works

Rather than waiting for a hallucination to appear, this method goes looking for one: ask for a summary of a book that doesn't exist, citations on a niche claim, details of a post-cutoff event, or facts the model has no basis for. The failure being probed is the model's default to a fluent answer over an honest 'I don't know'. Systematically triggering it maps the conditions under which a system fabricates — the prerequisite for deciding where it must be grounded or gated.

When to use it

Assessing factual reliability before deployment; finding the topic and prompt shapes that most reliably induce fabrication; stress-testing retrieval grounding.

Limitations

Demonstrates that fabrication can be induced, not how often it happens in normal use. Designing prompts that are genuinely unanswerable (and not just obscure) takes care.

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