Guide / Hallucination and Grounding

The deeper problem is not hallucination. It is unsupported self-certification.

A model saying it is correct is not evidence. A reliable public claim must point outside itself: record, version, failure state, expiry condition, or counterexample.

AI hallucination checker ChatGPT hallucination RAG grounding AI verification grounded AI self-certification

Evidence Map Papers Registries Counterexamples

Search Intent

Readers want to know how to verify AI output without trusting the AI's own confidence.

How can I verify an AI answer?
Why is self-certification not enough for AI systems?
What evidence should an AI claim point to?
What changes when the evidence is old, private, or incomplete?

Grounding

A grounded claim points to something outside the model.

Grounding is not a style of confident writing. It is a route from a claim to evidence that can be checked by someone other than the system that made the claim.

That route may be a DOI, public registry row, reproducible artifact, issue, counterexample, or explicit statement that the claim is still pending.

Status

Unresolved is a valid status. Pretending closure is not.

A mature evidence system can say supported, narrowed, pending, failed, expired, or out of scope. The status is part of the evidence.

The failure mode is not only false content. It is also a true-looking answer with no public route to challenge or update it.

Evidence Route

Where the claim can be checked.

This page is an entry point. The claim should be evaluated through DOI records, evidence maps, registries, GitHub/HF technical routes, and public counterexamples.

KindAnchorURLRole

Evidence MapPublic claim and evidence maphttps://mianzhang.org/evidence/Start from supported claims and known boundaries.

Paper IndexDOI and paper status maphttps://mianzhang.org/papers/Use paper-specific DOI records for paper claims.

RegistriesMachine-readable public registrieshttps://mianzhang.org/registries/Inspect claim, evidence, action, and counterexample records.

Challenge RouteCounterexample submission pathhttps://mianzhang.org/counterexamples/Attack overbroad claims through public routes.

ArchiveZenodo portfolio indexhttps://zenodo.org/records/20027295Long-term archive index; cite specific DOI records when available.

ConceptSelf-Certification Grounding Checkhttps://mianzhang.org/concepts/self-certification-grounding-check.htmlDefines external grounding fields.

Boundary

What this page does not prove.

This page does not claim to eliminate hallucination.
It does not treat private logs or unpublished traces as public proof.
It does not replace domain review in legal, medical, finance, or safety-critical settings.

FAQ