[selcuka]

> My college professor has certifications and has passed tests that weren't in their training data.

Granted, they are not (can't be) as rigorous as the tests your professor took, but new models are run through test suites before being released, too.

That being said, I saw my college professors making up things, too (mind you, they were all graduated from very good schools). One example I remember was our argument with a professor who argued that there is a theoretical limit for the coefficient of friction, and it is 1. That can potentially be categorised as a hallucination as it was completely made up and didn't make sense. Maybe it was in his training data (i.e. his own professors).

I agree with the "I don't know" part, though. This is something that LLMs are notoriously bad.