Hallucinations are a Feature

Neural networks are glorified statistical pattern matchers. When AI confidently describes non-existent academic papers or invents facts, it's not malfunctioning – it's doing exactly what it was designed to do: finding and reproducing patterns without understanding truth or fiction. At their core, these systems don't "understand" – they mimic patterns. Hallucinations are in fact a feature, not a bug, of the probabilistic pattern-matching mechanics of neural networks.