{"id":207708,"date":"2025-03-03T16:17:37","date_gmt":"2025-03-03T22:17:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/the-law-of-knowledge-overshadowing-towards-understanding-predicting-and-preventing-llm-hallucination"},"modified":"2025-03-03T16:17:37","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T22:17:37","slug":"the-law-of-knowledge-overshadowing-towards-understanding-predicting-and-preventing-llm-hallucination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/the-law-of-knowledge-overshadowing-towards-understanding-predicting-and-preventing-llm-hallucination","title":{"rendered":"The Law of Knowledge Overshadowing: Towards Understanding, Predicting, and Preventing LLM Hallucination"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/logo.the-law-of-knowledge-overshadowing-towards-understanding-predicting-and-preventing-llm-hallucination2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"\"><p> Abstract: Hallucination is a persistent challenge in large language models (LLMs), where even with rigorous quality control, models often generate distorted facts. This paradox, in which error generation continues despite high-quality training data, calls for a deeper understanding of the underlying LLM mechanisms. To address it, we propose a novel concept: knowledge overshadowing, where model\u2019s dominant knowledge can obscure less prominent knowledge during text generation, causing the model to fabricate inaccurate details. Building on this idea, we introduce a novel framework to quantify factual hallucinations by modeling knowledge overshadowing. Central to our approach is the log-linear law, which predicts that the rate of factual hallucination increases linearly with the logarithmic scale of Knowledge Popularity, Knowledge Length, and Model Size. The law provides a means to preemptively quantify hallucinations, offering foresight into their occurrence even before model training or inference. Built on overshadowing effect, we propose a new decoding strategy CoDa, to mitigate hallucinations, which notably enhance model factuality on Overshadow (27.9%), MemoTrap (13.1%) and NQ-Swap (18.3%). Our findings not only deepen understandings of the underlying mechanisms behind hallucinations but also provide actionable insights for developing more predictable and controllable language models.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>From: Yuji Zhang [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.arxiv.org\/show-email\/262a3d13\/2502.16143\" rel=\"nofollow\">view email<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Abstract: Hallucination is a persistent challenge in large language models (LLMs), where even with rigorous quality control, models often generate distorted facts. This paradox, in which error generation continues despite high-quality training data, calls for a deeper understanding of the underlying LLM mechanisms. To address it, we propose a novel concept: knowledge overshadowing, where model\u2019s [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1496,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}