2025 Women in AI Expert Series: Managing Hallucinations in Large Language Models

WAI CONTENT TEAM
14 minutes ago
4 min read

WAI Talks banner for "Expert Series: Session 6," featuring a person next to text on AI ethics. Mood is professional with muted colors.

Principal author: Karen Jensen

Welcome to the 2025 Expert Series from the Global Ethics and Culture office of Women in AI.

In 2025, we continue our global initiatives in Education, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Research to make AI accessible and inclusive for everyone, with a special focus on women and girls.

Like the 2024 Speaker Series, this year's Expert Series aims to boost opportunities for women and girls in AI. We'll feature global women experts sharing practical AI skills that could help you launch a new AI career or reskill for AI roles.

In our first session, titled "Prompt Like a Pro: AI Skills for Students and Young Professionals," our expert, Charlotte Tao, offered practical guidance on the essential skill of prompt engineering.

In our second session, titled “Agentic AI: Navigating Autonomy, Accountability, and Ethics,” our expert, Dhivya Nagasubramanian, offered clear metrics and understanding of Agentic AI and how it differs from Generative AI and its uses.

In our third session, titled, “Responsible AI in Action: A Look Back at a Winning Hackathon Project”, our expert, Dr. Ja’Nya Jenoch, brought together members of some of the teams from our Global Hackathon from 2023 and discussed where they are now, some things they’ve learned, and their inspiring message for women and girls as they move into careers in emerging technologies.

In our fourth session, titled, “Generative AI, Explicit Content, and Organizational Solutions for Not Safe for Work (NSFW) images”, our expert, Bobbi Stattelman, shared concerns about the prolific generation of AI-generated explicit content and non-consensual deep fake images, and how emerging technologies are exploring organizational solutions for these challenges.

In our fifth session, titled “How AI can help humans learn language", our expert, Professor Elizabeth Wonnacott, shared the crisis in language learning skills and how her work with Omniloquent, a model she's cofounded to teach language learning skills, can address this crisis.

Throughout the world, women have been storytellers and the keepers of oral histories. We honor those traditions and welcome a new generation of storytellers, dedicated to the deployment of Ethical and Responsible AI.

Also, in this session, we explored the use of AI avatars and digital/audio content. As we connect with more women around the World, we face simple challenges of availability and time zone differences. Our objective in the use of this digital media is to overcome these challenges in support of the global voice of @WomeninAI.

Our expert for today is Emaan Siddiqui. Emaan’s topic and her solutions involve managing hallucinations in Large Language Models. Emaan also warmly shared her journey into emerging technologies, like AI, and shared her challenges and her triumphs as she pursued this rewarding career.

Journeys into Emerging Technologies: AI

For many of us, emerging technologies careers, like artificial intelligence, may not have been the first path we chose. Emaan shares her educational path at the National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, the Foundation of Advancement of Science and Technology, at the University of Pakistan. Her original dreams were focused on the sciences, including astronomy and aerospace, data science, and cybersecurity. But through a chance opportunity, Emaan found her place in pursuing a career in Artificial Intelligence.

Challenges for Women in the Workplace and Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Here @WomeninAI, we support a mission to #MakeitFAIR!. We understand and acknowledge that women face many challenges as they explore careers in information and emerging technologies. One of the challenges Emaan shared was that as she dove into her educational pathway, the knowledge overload was overwhelming! At first, this led her to effort exhaustion and imposter syndrome. According to Stanford University, imposter syndrome, also known as the impostor phenomenon, was first coined by psychologists Pauline Rode Clance and Suzanne Imes (1978) to describe the internal experience of doubting one's abilities (ctl.Stanford.edu, 2021). But as Emaan shared, “Don’t underestimate yourself!” and, more impactfully, “Failure is Learning!”

AI Projects, the challenges of hallucinations, and some solutions for these challenges

Emaan is an AI Engineer and Solutions Architect whose projects have included automated decision support, prompt-driven modeling, multi-agent frameworks, and audio-based large language modeling, as well as building models to read structured and unstructured data. In her work, she has encountered many scenarios for hallucinations. Hallucinations occur when an LLM makes a decision based on a pattern sequence rather than a verified source. Some of the solutions Emaan mentioned to address hallucinations:

Forcing content through system prompts: a restricted method that drives the model to a defined set of sources
Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG): the model’s output is a summary of an external knowledge base and a contextual interpretation (context) for the user query
Many more solutions are defined in the video, so be sure to check that out!

Ethical AI Impacts and Owning Your Future in AI

When asked about the future of AI and the impact she hopes to have, Emaan shared that she is developing a user-friendly tool and additional resources to help women and girls build their knowledge and community in the tech sector. AI is not just a technical story – it’s a human story that encourages and supports empowering women in emerging technology careers! Women offer a critical perspective in developing these tools to make AI responsible and ethical.

Summary

Emaan’s last thoughts and message are to believe in yourself and build your garden of knowledge. Your voice matters! Be the Boss Lady!

Share your comments here on this post and with us on Social Media @WomeninAI to ensure we #MakeitFAIR!

Event recording: You can view the recording of the event using this link.

This Expert Series is presented by the Women in AI Ethics & Culture Office volunteer team, dedicated to A Global Vision for achieving gender parity in emerging technologies through increasing Opportunity, championing inclusive Policies, and fostering practical Action that delivers meaningful and measurable impact.