Catch Me if You Search: When Contextual Web Search Results Affect the Detection of Hallucinations

While we increasingly rely on large language models (LLMs) for various tasks, these models are known to produce inaccurate content or 'hallucinations' with potentially disastrous consequences. The recent integration of web search results into LLMs prompts the question of whether people utilize them to verify the generated content, thereby avoiding falling victim to hallucinations. This study (N = 560) investigated how the provision of search results, either static (fixed search results) or dynamic (participant-driven searches), affect participants' perceived accuracy and confidence in evaluating LLM-generated content (i.e., genuine, minor hallucination, major hallucination), compared to the control condition (no search results). Findings indicate that participants in both static and dynamic conditions (vs. control) rated hallucinated content to be less accurate. However, those in the dynamic condition rated genuine content as more accurate and demonstrated greater overall confidence in their assessments than those in the static or control conditions. In addition, those higher in need for cognition (NFC) rated major hallucinations to be less accurate than low NFC participants, with no corresponding difference for genuine content or minor hallucinations. These results underscore the potential benefits of integrating web search results into LLMs for the detection of hallucinations, as well as the need for a more nuanced approach when developing human-centered systems, taking user characteristics into account.

Beyond checkmate: exploring the creative chokepoints in AI text

Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), unlocking unprecedented capabilities. This rapid advancement has spurred research into various aspects of LLMs, their text generation & reasoning capability, and potential misuse, fueling the necessity for robust detection methods. While numerous prior research has focused on detecting LLM-generated text (AI text) and thus checkmating them, our study investigates a relatively unexplored territory: portraying the nuanced distinctions between human and AI texts across text segments. Whether LLMs struggle with or excel at incorporating linguistic ingenuity across different text segments carries substantial implications for determining their potential as effective creative assistants to humans. Through an analogy with the structure of chess games-comprising opening, middle, and end games-we analyze text segments (introduction, body, and conclusion) to determine where the most significant distinctions between human and AI texts exist. While AI texts can approximate the body segment better due to its increased length, a closer examination reveals a pronounced disparity, highlighting the importance of this segment in AI text detection. Additionally, human texts exhibit higher cross-segment differences compared to AI texts. Overall, our research can shed light on the intricacies of human-AI text distinctions, offering novel insights for text detection and understanding.

Generative AI Policies under the Microscope: How CS Conferences Are Navigating the New Frontier in Scholarly Writing

This paper explores the current state of generative AI policies of computer science conferences and offers guidelines for policy adoption.

Fakes of Varying Shades: How Warning Affects Human Perception and Engagement Regarding LLM Hallucinations

The widespread adoption and transformative effects of large language models (LLMs) have sparked concerns regarding their capacity to produce inaccurate and fictitious content, referred to as `hallucinations'. Given the potential risks associated with hallucinations, humans should be able to identify them. This research aims to understand the human perception of LLM hallucinations by systematically varying the degree of hallucination (genuine, minor hallucination, major hallucination) and examining its interaction with warning (i.e., a warning of potential inaccuracies: absent vs. present). Participants (N=419) from Prolific rated the perceived accuracy and engaged with content (e.g., like, dislike, share) in a Q/A format. Results indicate that humans rank content as truthful in the order genuine > minor hallucination > major hallucination and user engagement behaviors mirror this pattern. More importantly, we observed that warning improves hallucination detection without significantly affecting the perceived truthfulness of genuine content. We conclude by offering insights for future tools to aid human detection of hallucinations.