Hahaha. Reliable confidence, isn't that a contradiction in terms? If a model makes mistakes but has great confidence estimation why wouldn't it make fewer mistakes in the first place, since it knows when it is wrong.

But if a LM looks up a topic and sees contradictory answers, and none of them is much more reputable, maybe it can still use that information to say it is inconclusive. Knowing a topic is controversial or not present in search engines is useful information. chatGPT would hallucinate, a search + chatGPT solution would refrain from hallucinations. It could also give references.