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Show HN: Regression tests for detecting cross-domain hallucinations in LLMs

LLMs sometimes generate structurally valid but logically impossible claims when technical and legal domains mix.

Example failure mode: A model sees “CVE-2024-XXXX fixed in v2.1” and hallucinates a causal link to “Users must pay retroactive fees under EU regulation Article 56.”

To explore this, I built a regression dataset (40 edge cases) covering:

Fake identifier bindings (CVE + version)

Retroactive fiscal claims

Cross-domain causality leaps (Tech → Legal)

Over-assertive phrasing without evidence

Then I designed a structured system prompt that:

Detects official identifiers (CVE, Regulation numbers) vs placeholders

Flags monetary + retroactivity combinations as high-risk

Enforces proportional claim strength based on available evidence

Results:

Automated: 40/40 regression cases pass (JSON dataset + simple Python runner included).

Manual adversarial: ~40 prompts designed to test:

Draft article traps (e.g., hallucinated “Article 52c” in EU AI Act)

Pricing model fabrications (e.g., “billing based on parameter count”)

Version binding errors (e.g., incorrect Node.js default versions)

This is not fine-tuning—just a structured prompt experiment focused on structural validation.

Looking for feedback on:

Missing edge cases

Failure modes I didn’t consider

Whether this approach generalizes beyond legal/technical mixing

Gist (spec + dataset + runner): https://gist.github.com/ginsabo/6ebeb9490846ee6a268bd13560c0...

1 points Ginsabo 8 months ago 2 comments

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