[bugglebeetle]

I’m confused why you claim attribution is somehow “unnatural”? Every actually useful lecture, essay, report, etc. I’ve encountered included things like footnotes, references, or a bibliography. So much so, in fact, that I tend to disregard things that don’t include them. So-and-so claims X. What are their sources? There are none? Who cares. Life is too short to engage with arguments that lack rigor or support, even though these things themselves require verification!

[MacsHeadroom]

Life is too short for me to engage with your argument, because you've failed to attribute the first writers of sentences / ideas semantically similar to each of the lines in your comment.

[bugglebeetle]

Ah, you’re right. My mistake. I should’ve simply claimed it’s natural to cite sources instead. After all, there is no debating what is natural or those who are simple.

[drdaeman]

My apologies, my perception of LLMs is somewhat skewed, because I primarily think of conversation agents.

It's unnatural in a conversation. When we're talking about, say, Superman, we don't ever say that it's "a registered trademark of DC Comics, Inc." With obligatory exceptions for comical or satirical effects, or if we're specifically talking about trademarks or copyrights, etc. And of course when we're talking about robots we don't normally give any nods to Karel Čapek.

I believe that, same as humans, LLMs already try to provide references when requested, or if the style/format (such as lecture) prompts for having them. Just remember that famous anecdote where a lawyer used ChatGPT and it wrote a speech and provided believable references (then judge threw this out of court because quality/reliability is another problem - which is out of scope, though).