--- title: OpenAI Study Investigates the Causes of LLM... description: OpenAI research identifies that LLM hallucinations stem from training methods that reward guessing over expressing uncertainty. Standard evaluation metrics... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/openai-study-investigates-the-causes-of-llm-hallucinations-and-potential-solutions-l15kdmz0z twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: OpenAI Study Investigates the Causes of LLM Hallucinations and Potential Solutions | daily.dev og:description: OpenAI research identifies that LLM hallucinations stem from training methods that reward guessing over expressing uncertainty. Standard evaluation metrics... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/openai-study-investigates-the-causes-of-llm-hallucinations-and-potential-solutions-l15kdmz0z og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/L15kDMZ0Z.png og:image:alt: OpenAI Study Investigates the Causes of LLM Hallucinations and Potential Solutions og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # OpenAI Study Investigates the Causes of LLM Hallucinations and Potential Solutions **[InfoQ](https://daily.dev/sources/infoq)** · 4 min read · 4 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary OpenAI research identifies that LLM hallucinations stem from training methods that reward guessing over expressing uncertainty. Standard evaluation metrics prioritize accuracy and penalize abstention, creating a cycle where models learn to guess confidently rather than acknowledge what they don't know. The researchers propose rethinking evaluation approaches to penalize confident errors more heavily than uncertainty expressions. While OpenAI reports success reducing error rates in GPT-5-thinking-mini from 75% to 26%, critics debate whether hallucinations are bugs or inherent features of predictive models, with some arguing LLMs fundamentally lack the ability to fact-check their own outputs. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: --- Tags: [#machine-learning](https://daily.dev/tags/machine-learning), [#data-science](https://daily.dev/tags/data-science), [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#openai](https://daily.dev/tags/openai), [#ai-safety](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-safety) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/openai-study-investigates-the-causes-of-llm-hallucinations-and-potential-solutions-l15kdmz0z) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"OpenAI Study Investigates the Causes of LLM Hallucinations and Potential Solutions","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/openai-study-investigates-the-causes-of-llm-hallucinations-and-potential-solutions-l15kdmz0z","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/openai-study-investigates-the-causes-of-llm-hallucinations-and-potential-solutions-l15kdmz0z"},"datePublished":"2025-10-12T16:05:14.763Z","dateModified":"2025-10-12T16:05:35.098Z","description":"OpenAI research identifies that LLM hallucinations stem from training methods that reward guessing over expressing uncertainty. 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