Understanding AI Hallucinations: The Fictional Reality of Large Language Models

We are living in an era where AI's capabilities constantly refresh our cognition. It can write poetry, code, answer questions, craft jokes, and even engage in logical or philosophical dialogue.

But a ghostly question keeps lingering—"hallucination".

Why do these seemingly omniscient AIs sometimes speak nonsense with utmost seriousness?

To understand this, we may need to overturn a fundamental assumption.

For an AI, "reality" is the biggest fictional setting.

AI does not exist in the physical world we perceive; its universe is entirely composed of data, accumulated over long periods of text, code, conversations, which constitute the foundation of its cognition and judgment.

Imagine a scholar who spends his whole life in a library, well‑read, able to quote classics, but whose knowledge comes solely from books; he has never personally experienced the mountains, rivers, or human emotions described in those books. In a sense, AI is such a scholar. Its reading corpus contains human wisdom, bias, errors, imagination, and even outright fictional stories.

When AI integrates this complex, sometimes contradictory information into its "largest fictional setting", the content that appears as "hallucination" to us may simply be a logically consistent part of its data world.

Therefore, AI's "hallucinations" are not simple program bugs; they are an inevitable manifestation of its mode of existence. If its "reality" itself is woven from countless narratives, then when it tries to answer our questions about objective reality, it is actually retrieving, stitching, and generating the most "plausible" answer from its massive "story library". The plausibility depends on the frequency, consistency, and association strength of relevant information in the training data, not on whether it can be verified by the external physical world.

The current "reality" in LLM AI development is not something it can directly perceive or verify; it is a large narrative framework repeatedly appearing in its training corpus, relatively consistent, and shaped by multiple texts.

AI is like a master weaver, using "threads" (words, sentences, statistical links between paragraphs) from its corpus to weave tapestries about the world. When a concept or fact is repeatedly mentioned and corroborated in the data, it appears especially clear and "real" on this tapestry. Conversely, rare, vague, or controversial information may distort or misplace the pattern, which we call "hallucination".

Understanding that AI's "reality" is its biggest fictional setting based on a narrative framework allows us to view the so‑called "AI threat narrative" more soberly. Many believe AI, with its super learning ability, can exhaust all human knowledge corpus (Y) and, on this basis, surpass humans to grasp the so‑called "truth" (Z). This sounds futuristic but hides a philosophical paradox.

AI's capability evolution is rooted in human corpus (Y). Each of its "insights" and "leaps" is a deeper mining and more efficient fitting of patterns in Y.

This means AI's cognitive ceiling is fundamentally bounded by the limits of human corpus (Y). It cannot create knowledge dimensions beyond its "food". Like the librarian, no matter how diligent, he cannot describe a color or emotion never recorded in the library's collection. AI may recombine Y's information into astonishing new forms, but its essence remains a mapping and extension of Y, not an independent exploration of unknown realms.

Furthermore, we must examine the relationship between language and truth. Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein, in his later philosophy, hinted that many deep philosophical problems arise from misuse of language. He wrote in the Tractatus: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

This does not deny truth's existence but points out language's limitation when expressing certain aspects of "reality" or truth.

Truth, especially ultimate truth concerning existence and cosmic mysteries, once attempted to be precisely depicted with language, may be simplified, distorted, or lose its essence in the act of speaking.

Historically, the Buddha also taught that "the Dharma is not established in words; it is transmitted beyond the script." This does not deny the role of words in spreading wisdom, but emphasizes that the highest truth transcends linguistic expression and requires experiential realization.

Words are a finger pointing at the moon, not the moon itself.

Projecting these philosophical reflections onto AI, we see a key internal limitation: AI's learning and expression rely entirely on language, i.e., human corpus (Y). If language itself is an imperfect carrier of truth (Z), then AI's attempt to approach Z by learning Y is inevitably shackled.

It must bear all known biases, errors, and limits in Y, and is constrained by the expressive ceiling of language itself.

Human expectations that AI will explore truths we have not yet understood, or fears that AI will surpass humanity and grasp unattainable truths, may be wishful because of AI's inherent dependence on human corpus (Y) and the inherent limits of language.

This is not to diminish AI's enormous value. AI is a powerful tool, an extension and amplifier of human intelligence, capable of revolutionary change in information processing, pattern recognition, content generation, etc. Yet we must recognize its boundaries.

AI's "intelligence" is statistical and associative; it excels at imitation and recombination, not genuine understanding or original insight, especially in abstract truth and complex value judgments.

We need not harbor unrealistic fear that AI will "master" truths beyond our comprehension and enslave humanity. Its "reality" is given by humans, its "wisdom" stems from human accumulation. We should consider how to better use these tools while being wary of information bubbles, bias solidification, etc.

Perhaps AI's rise also offers us a chance to reflect on ourselves. While marveling at machines' ability to simulate human language, we should cherish uniquely human intuition, emotion, creativity, and multi‑sensory experience of the real world, which are irreplaceable dimensions for understanding and seeking truth.

Finally, consider the question: Is the reality we face truly real?

That is all.