Learning to Trust Your Feelings: Leveraging Self-awareness in LLMs for
  Hallucination Mitigation
Yuxin Liang Zhuoyang Song Hao Wang Jiaxing Zhang
We evaluate the ability of Large Language Models (LLMs) to discern and
express their internal knowledge state, a key factor in countering factual
hallucination and ensuring reliable application of LLMs. We observe a robust
self-awareness of internal knowledge state in LLMs, evidenced by over 85%
accuracy in knowledge probing. However, LLMs often fail to express their
internal knowledge during generation, leading to factual hallucinations. We
develop an automated hallucination annotation tool, Dreamcatcher, which merges
knowledge probing and consistency checking methods to rank factual preference
data. Using knowledge preference as reward, We propose a Reinforcement Learning
from Knowledge Feedback (RLKF) training framework, leveraging reinforcement
learning to enhance the factuality and honesty of LLMs. Our experiments across
multiple models show that RLKF training effectively enhances the ability of
models to utilize their internal knowledge state, boosting performance in a
variety of knowledge-based and honesty-related tasks.