Citation: A Key to Building Responsible and Accountable Large Language Models
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Abstract (arXiv)
Large Language Models (LLMs) bring transformative benefits alongside unique challenges, including intellectual property (IP) and ethical concerns. This position paper explores a novel angle to mitigate these risks, drawing parallels between LLMs and established web systems. We identify "citation" - the acknowledgement or reference to a source or evidence - as a crucial yet missing component in LLMs. Incorporating citation could enhance content transparency and verifiability, thereby confronting the IP and ethical issues in the deployment of LLMs. We further propose that a comprehensive citation mechanism for LLMs should account for both non-parametric and parametric content. Despite the complexity of implementing such a citation mechanism, along with the potential pitfalls, we advocate for its development. Building on this foundation, we outline several research problems in this area, aiming to guide future explorations towards building more responsible and accountable LLMs.
Key facts. Cited by 20 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 38 of its 52 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 Jul 2023.
Builds on
38 of 52 references.
References · 38
- 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
- 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,712
- 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 14,441
- 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
- 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,160
- 2022PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathwayscited by 5,304
- 2020Extracting Training Data from Large Language Modelscited by 2,144
- 2020REALM: Retrieval-Augmented Language Model Pre-Trainingcited by 2,126
- 2022Survey of Hallucination in Natural Language Generationcited by 2,056
- 2019Language Models as Knowledge Bases?cited by 1,922
- 2017Understanding Black-box Predictions via Influence Functionscited by 1,714
- 2021Improving language models by retrieving from trillions of tokenscited by 1,278
26 more
- 2020Leveraging Passage Retrieval with Generative Models for Open Domain Question Answeringcited by 1,203
- 2023PaLM 2 Technical Reportcited by 1,154
- 2022Atlas: Few-shot Learning with Retrieval Augmented Language Modelscited by 940
- 2023REPLUG: Retrieval-Augmented Black-Box Language Modelscited by 786
- 2022Quantifying Memorization Across Neural Language Modelscited by 755
- 2022Galactica: A Large Language Model for Sciencecited by 736
- 2022Towards Reasoning in Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 593
- 2023Enabling Large Language Models to Generate Text with Citationscited by 584
- 2023Multi-step Jailbreaking Privacy Attacks on ChatGPTcited by 320
- 2023Evaluating Verifiability in Generative Search Enginescited by 297
- 2022Teaching language models to support answers with verified quotescited by 290
- 2022RARR: Researching and Revising What Language Models Say, Using Language Modelscited by 286
- 2023TRAK: Attributing Model Behavior at Scalecited by 273
- 2021Measuring Attribution in Natural Language Generation Modelscited by 253
- 2022Are Large Pre-Trained Language Models Leaking Your Personal Information?cited by 195
- 2022What Does it Mean for a Language Model to Preserve Privacy?cited by 194
- 2022If Influence Functions are the Answer, Then What is the Question?cited by 142
- 2023On the Risk of Misinformation Pollution with Large Language Modelscited by 124
- 2022Do Language Models Plagiarize?cited by 72
- 2023Automatic Evaluation of Attribution by Large Language Modelscited by 70
- 2023Shall We Pretrain Autoregressive Language Models with Retrieval? A Comprehensive Studycited by 63
- 2023On the Creativity of Large Language Modelscited by 57
- 2023Why Does ChatGPT Fall Short in Providing Truthful Answers?cited by 54
- 2022On the Impossible Safety of Large AI Modelscited by 27
- 2023Quantifying Association Capabilities of Large Language Models and Its Implications on Privacy Leakagecited by 26
- 2022Threats to Pre-trained Language Models: Survey and Taxonomycited by 16
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Citing papers per year: 2023: 5; 2024: 6; 2025: 5; 2026: 4.
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- 2023A Survey of Hallucination in Large Foundation Modelscited by 365
- 2024From Matching to Generation: A Survey on Generative Information Retrievalcited by 89
- 2024What is Your Data Worth to GPT? LLM-Scale Data Valuation with Influence Functionscited by 88
- 2023RAVEN: In-Context Learning with Retrieval-Augmented Encoder-Decoder Language Modelscited by 36
- 2023Creativity Support in the Age of Large Language Models: An Empirical Study Involving Emerging Writerscited by 32
- 2024Source-Aware Training Enables Knowledge Attribution in Language Modelscited by 29
- 2024Navigating LLM Ethics: Advancements, Challenges, and Future Directionscited by 28
- 2025AI Agentic Programming: A Survey of Techniques, Challenges, and Opportunitiescited by 26
- 2025Epistemic Alignment: A Mediating Framework for User-LLM Knowledge Deliverycited by 14
- 2023Unifying Corroborative and Contributive Attributions in Large Language Modelscited by 10
- 2025The Attribution Crisis in LLM Search Resultscited by 3
- 2024On the Capacity of Citation Generation by Large Language Modelscited by 2
8 more
- 2025SafePassage: High-Fidelity Information Extraction with Black Box LLMscited by 2
- 2026When AI Persuades: Adversarial Explanation Attacks on Human Trust in AI-Assisted Decision Makingcited by 2
- 2023From Bytes to Biases: Investigating the Cultural Self-Perception of Large Language Modelscited by 1
- 2025SQuAI: Scientific Question-Answering with Multi-Agent Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 1
- 2026TRACE: Tourism Recommendation with Accountable Citation Evidencecited by 1
- 2024Physio: An LLM-Based Physiotherapy Advisorcited by 0
- 2026Data Citation for Large Language Models: A Challengecited by 0
- 2026Hallucinations in LLMs: A Lifecycle-Based Survey of Causes, Detection, Mitigation, and Preventioncited by 0
- 2026Data Citation for Large Language Models: A Challenge26 Aug 2026
- 2026Hallucinations in LLMs: A Lifecycle-Based Survey of Causes, Detection, Mitigation, and Prevention20 Jul 2026
- 2026TRACE: Tourism Recommendation with Accountable Citation Evidence8 May 2026
- 2026When AI Persuades: Adversarial Explanation Attacks on Human Trust in AI-Assisted Decision Making3 Feb 2026
- 2025SQuAI: Scientific Question-Answering with Multi-Agent Retrieval-Augmented Generation17 Oct 2025
- 2025SafePassage: High-Fidelity Information Extraction with Black Box LLMs30 Sep 2025
- 2025AI Agentic Programming: A Survey of Techniques, Challenges, and Opportunities15 Aug 2025
- 2025The Attribution Crisis in LLM Search Results27 Jun 2025
- 2025Epistemic Alignment: A Mediating Framework for User-LLM Knowledge Delivery1 Apr 2025
- 2024On the Capacity of Citation Generation by Large Language Models15 Oct 2024
- 2024What is Your Data Worth to GPT? LLM-Scale Data Valuation with Influence Functions22 May 2024
- 2024Navigating LLM Ethics: Advancements, Challenges, and Future Directions14 May 2024
8 more
- 2024From Matching to Generation: A Survey on Generative Information Retrieval23 Apr 2024
- 2024Source-Aware Training Enables Knowledge Attribution in Language Models1 Apr 2024
- 2024Physio: An LLM-Based Physiotherapy Advisor3 Jan 2024
- 2023From Bytes to Biases: Investigating the Cultural Self-Perception of Large Language Models21 Dec 2023
- 2023Unifying Corroborative and Contributive Attributions in Large Language Models20 Nov 2023
- 2023Creativity Support in the Age of Large Language Models: An Empirical Study Involving Emerging Writers22 Sep 2023
- 2023A Survey of Hallucination in Large Foundation Models12 Sep 2023
- 2023RAVEN: In-Context Learning with Retrieval-Augmented Encoder-Decoder Language Models15 Aug 2023
- 2023A Survey of Hallucination in Large Foundation Modelscited by 365
- 2024From Matching to Generation: A Survey on Generative Information Retrievalcited by 89
- 2024What is Your Data Worth to GPT? LLM-Scale Data Valuation with Influence Functionscited by 88
- 2023Creativity Support in the Age of Large Language Models: An Empirical Study Involving Emerging Writerscited by 32
- 2024Source-Aware Training Enables Knowledge Attribution in Language Modelscited by 29
- 2024Navigating LLM Ethics: Advancements, Challenges, and Future Directionscited by 28
- 2025Epistemic Alignment: A Mediating Framework for User-LLM Knowledge Deliverycited by 14
- 2023Unifying Corroborative and Contributive Attributions in Large Language Modelscited by 10
- 2025The Attribution Crisis in LLM Search Resultscited by 3
- 2025SafePassage: High-Fidelity Information Extraction with Black Box LLMscited by 2
- 2026When AI Persuades: Adversarial Explanation Attacks on Human Trust in AI-Assisted Decision Makingcited by 2
- 2023From Bytes to Biases: Investigating the Cultural Self-Perception of Large Language Modelscited by 1
12 most cited of 16 All 16 (JSON)
- 2026Data Citation for Large Language Models: A Challenge26 Aug 2026
- 2026Hallucinations in LLMs: A Lifecycle-Based Survey of Causes, Detection, Mitigation, and Prevention20 Jul 2026
- 2026TRACE: Tourism Recommendation with Accountable Citation Evidence8 May 2026
- 2026When AI Persuades: Adversarial Explanation Attacks on Human Trust in AI-Assisted Decision Making3 Feb 2026
- 2025SafePassage: High-Fidelity Information Extraction with Black Box LLMs30 Sep 2025
- 2025The Attribution Crisis in LLM Search Results27 Jun 2025
- 2025Epistemic Alignment: A Mediating Framework for User-LLM Knowledge Delivery1 Apr 2025
- 2024What is Your Data Worth to GPT? LLM-Scale Data Valuation with Influence Functions22 May 2024
- 2024Navigating LLM Ethics: Advancements, Challenges, and Future Directions14 May 2024
- 2024From Matching to Generation: A Survey on Generative Information Retrieval23 Apr 2024
- 2024Source-Aware Training Enables Knowledge Attribution in Language Models1 Apr 2024
- 2024Physio: An LLM-Based Physiotherapy Advisor3 Jan 2024
12 newest of 16 All 16 (JSON)