[lukev]

I do think trusting an LLM is less firm ground for knowledge than other ways of learning.

Say I have a model that I know is 98% accurate. And it tells me a fact.

I am now justified in adjusting my priors and weighting the fact quite heavily at .98. But that’s as far as I can get.

If I learned a fact from an online anonymously edited encyclopedia, I might also weight that a 0.98 to start with. But that’s a strictly better case because I can dig more. I can look up the cited sources, look at the edit history, or message the author. I can use that as an entry point to end up with significantly more than 98% conviction.

That’s a pretty important difference with respect to knowledge. It isn’t just about accuracy percentage.