Thank you, I am trying to be less abrasive online, especially about LLM/GEN-AI stuff. I have come to terms with the fact that my desire for accuracy and truthfulness in things skews way past the median to the point that it’s almost pathological, which is why I ended up studying history in college, probably. To me, the idea of using a LLM to get information seems like a bad use of my time- I would methodically check everything it says, and the total time spent would vastly exceed any amount saved, but that’s because I’m weird.

Like, it’s probably fine for anything you’d rely on a skimming a wikipedia article for. I wouldn’t use them for recipes or cooking, because that could give you food poisoning if something goes wrong, but if you’re just like, “Hey, what’s Ice-IV?” then the answer it gives is probably equivalent in 98% of cases to checking a few websites. People should invest their energy where they need it, or where they have to, and it’s less effort for me to not use the technology, but I know there are people who can benefit from it and have a good use-case situation to use it.

My main point of caution for people reading this is that you shouldn’t rely on an LLM for important information- whatever that means to you, because if you want to be absolutely sure about something, then you shouldn’t risk an AI hallucination, even if it’s unlikely.