# CausalGuard: A Smart System for Detecting and Preventing False Information in Large Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.11600 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.11600/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 24 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14168/) (2021)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03874/) (2021)
- [On Calibration of Modern Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.04599/) (2017)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Simple and Scalable Predictive Uncertainty Estimation using Deep Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01474/) (2016)
- [HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.09600/) (2018)
- [TruthfulQA: Measuring How Models Mimic Human Falsehoods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07958/) (2021)
- [Language Models (Mostly) Know What They Know](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05221/) (2022)
- [CommonsenseQA: A Question Answering Challenge Targeting Commonsense Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00937/) (2018)
- [FEVER: a large-scale dataset for Fact Extraction and VERification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05355/) (2018)
- [Leveraging Passage Retrieval with Generative Models for Open Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.01282/) (2020)
- [Semantic Uncertainty: Linguistic Invariances for Uncertainty Estimation in Natural Language Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.09664/) (2023)
- [SelfCheckGPT: Zero-Resource Black-Box Hallucination Detection for Generative Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08896/) (2023)
- [Fact or Fiction: Verifying Scientific Claims](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.14974/) (2020)
- [The Web as a Knowledge-base for Answering Complex Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.06643/) (2018)
- [Neural Module Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.02799/) (2015)
- [The Neuro-Symbolic Concept Learner: Interpreting Scenes, Words, and Sentences From Natural Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.12584/) (2019)
- [Chain-of-Verification Reduces Hallucination in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11495/) (2023)
- [Internet-Augmented Dialogue Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07566/) (2021)
- [Neural-Symbolic Computing: An Effective Methodology for Principled Integration of Machine Learning and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.06088/) (2019)
- [Faithful to the Original: Fact Aware Neural Abstractive Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.04434/) (2017)
- [CausaLM: Causal Model Explanation Through Counterfactual Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.13407/) (2020)
- [COVID-Fact: Fact Extraction and Verification of Real-World Claims on COVID-19 Pandemic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03794/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While large language models have transformed how we interact with AI systems, they have a critical weakness: they confidently state false information that sounds entirely plausible. This "hallucination" problem has become a major barrier to using these models where accuracy matters most. Existing solutions either require retraining the entire model, add significant computational costs, or miss the root causes of why these hallucinations occur in the first place. We present CausalGuard, a new approach that combines causal reasoning with symbolic logic to catch and prevent hallucinations as they happen. Unlike previous methods that only check outputs after generation, our system understands the causal chain that leads to false statements and intervenes early in the process. CausalGuard works through two complementary paths: one that traces causal relationships between what the model knows and what it generates, and another that checks logical consistency using automated reasoning. Testing across twelve different benchmarks, we found that CausalGuard correctly identifies hallucinations 89.3% of the time while missing only 8.3% of actual hallucinations. More importantly, it reduces false claims by nearly 80% while keeping responses natural and helpful. The system performs especially well on complex reasoning tasks where multiple steps of logic are required. Because CausalGuard shows its reasoning process, it works well in sensitive areas like medical diagnosis or financial analysis where understanding why a decision was made matters as much as the decision itself.