{"paper":{"title":"A Geometric Analysis of Small-sized Language Model Hallucinations","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.AI","cs.CY"],"primary_cat":"cs.CL","authors_text":"Elia Onofri, Emanuele Ricco, Lorenzo Cima, Roberto Di Pietro, Stefano Cresci","submitted_at":"2026-02-16T14:29:55Z","abstract_excerpt":"Hallucinations -- plausible but factually incorrect responses -- pose a major challenge to the reliability of Large Language Models (LLMs), especially in multi-step or agentic settings.\n  Existing work largely frames hallucinations as a consequence of missing knowledge; we show instead that, even when the relevant factual knowledge is present, models still produce hallucinated answers, pointing to retrieval instability rather than knowledge gaps.\n  Building on this observation, we introduce APORIA (Aggregate Prompt-wise Observation Retrieving Instability via Asymmetry -- the state of puzzlemen"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2602.14778","kind":"arxiv","version":3},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2602.14778/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}