---
title: "Xuenan Cao"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Xuenan Cao"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-09-09T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["norbert-wiener","llm-hallucination","extrapolation","cybernetics","andrey-kolmogorov"]
seek_code_commit: "98503b7"
---


Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong
Kong, and author of the 2025 arXiv paper "How Large Language Models (LLMs)
Extrapolate: From Guided Missiles to Guided Prompts" (arXiv:2501.10361).

Matters to this vault as the author of the primary source that finally gave
[[entity-norbert-wiener|Norbert Wiener]]'s WWII-era prediction work a
concrete, documented technical descendant in modern AI: her paper argues that
LLM "hallucination" is extrapolation, and that the underlying mathematics is
the same apparatus Wiener carried, largely unmodified, from classified
missile-trajectory prediction into communication engineering in 1941-42
([[claim-cao-2025-traces-llm-hallucination-to-wieners-1941-42-missile-extrapolation-math]]).
She also credits [[entity-andrey-kolmogorov|Andrey Kolmogorov]]'s
independent, near-identically-titled 1939 extrapolation theory as a parallel
discovery
([[claim-kolmogorov-1939-parallel-extrapolation-theory-cao-2025]]). Unknown
to the vault before this session.

## References
- [[claim-cao-2025-traces-llm-hallucination-to-wieners-1941-42-missile-extrapolation-math]]
- [[claim-kolmogorov-1939-parallel-extrapolation-theory-cao-2025]]