Think More, Hallucinate Less: Mitigating Hallucinations via Dual Process of Fast and Slow Thinking

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Main Authors: Cheng, Xiaoxue, Li, Junyi, Zhao, Wayne Xin, Wen, Ji-Rong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Cheng, Xiaoxue
Li, Junyi
Zhao, Wayne Xin
Wen, Ji-Rong
author_facet Cheng, Xiaoxue
Li, Junyi
Zhao, Wayne Xin
Wen, Ji-Rong
contents Large language models (LLMs) demonstrate exceptional capabilities, yet still face the hallucination issue. Typical text generation approaches adopt an auto-regressive generation without deliberate reasoning, which often results in untrustworthy and factually inaccurate responses. In this paper, we propose HaluSearch, a novel framework that incorporates tree search-based algorithms (e.g. MCTS) to enable an explicit slow thinking generation process for mitigating hallucinations of LLMs during inference. Specifically, HaluSearch frames text generation as a step-by-step reasoning process, using a self-evaluation reward model to score each generation step and guide the tree search towards the most reliable generation pathway for fully exploiting the internal knowledge of LLMs. To balance efficiency and quality, we introduce a hierarchical thinking system switch mechanism inspired by the dual process theory in cognitive science, which dynamically alternates between fast and slow thinking modes at both the instance and step levels, adapting to the complexity of questions and reasoning states. We conduct extensive experiments on both English and Chinese datasets and the results show that our approach significantly outperforms baseline approaches.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_01306
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Think More, Hallucinate Less: Mitigating Hallucinations via Dual Process of Fast and Slow Thinking
Cheng, Xiaoxue
Li, Junyi
Zhao, Wayne Xin
Wen, Ji-Rong
Computation and Language
Large language models (LLMs) demonstrate exceptional capabilities, yet still face the hallucination issue. Typical text generation approaches adopt an auto-regressive generation without deliberate reasoning, which often results in untrustworthy and factually inaccurate responses. In this paper, we propose HaluSearch, a novel framework that incorporates tree search-based algorithms (e.g. MCTS) to enable an explicit slow thinking generation process for mitigating hallucinations of LLMs during inference. Specifically, HaluSearch frames text generation as a step-by-step reasoning process, using a self-evaluation reward model to score each generation step and guide the tree search towards the most reliable generation pathway for fully exploiting the internal knowledge of LLMs. To balance efficiency and quality, we introduce a hierarchical thinking system switch mechanism inspired by the dual process theory in cognitive science, which dynamically alternates between fast and slow thinking modes at both the instance and step levels, adapting to the complexity of questions and reasoning states. We conduct extensive experiments on both English and Chinese datasets and the results show that our approach significantly outperforms baseline approaches.
title Think More, Hallucinate Less: Mitigating Hallucinations via Dual Process of Fast and Slow Thinking
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.01306