SRC02-E01 — IBM Hallucination Characterization

Research	R0048 — Corporate AI Training
Run	2026-03-29
Query	Q003 — Hallucination Training
Source	SRC02 — IBM Guide
Evidence	SRC02-E01

Extract

IBM's guide states that hallucinations are not "glitches or bugs" but "represent the fundamental operation of systems trained to generate coherent text without mechanisms for truth verification." The "probabilistic nature of LLMs makes hallucinations an inherent limitation rather than an occasional glitch." Examples include: a customer service chatbot inventing nonexistent return policies, code generation tools fabricating API endpoints, financial analysis tools citing imaginary reports, and an AI system creating "detailed biographies of employees who had never worked at the company."

Relevance to Hypotheses

Hypothesis	Relationship	Strength
H1	Partially supports — this is vendor educational content that frames hallucinations as fundamental	Moderate
H2	Contradicts — some content does frame hallucinations as fundamental, not just occasional	Moderate
H3	Supports — IBM's guide is more sophisticated than typical training but still does not connect to sycophancy	Moderate

Context

IBM's educational content is among the more sophisticated vendor explanations, framing hallucinations as fundamental rather than occasional. However, this content appears in a general "Think" article, not in employee training modules.

Notes

IBM notably frames hallucinations as "fundamental" — stronger language than most training materials. However, the guide does not distinguish between random hallucinations and user-expectation-confirming hallucinations, and does not connect hallucination to sycophancy.