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by lelanthran 35 days ago
> Ask a human a question like this, and they also have a chance of getting it wrong, even when confident.

We google something specifically because the humans within reach don't know. The goal of searching is, well, to search pages - we're trying to find a site when we use google search.

The goal when using an LLM is generally different; we want an answer, not a site.

1 comments

LLMs are not a site. They are a clever person that can point you to sites. They, like humans, are fallible.
LLMs can not point you to sites, only in a general direction. That is because complete URLs do not exist as single tokens in any of the large models. It can synthesize a plausible-looking url, and if you're lucky that URL might even exist. But that doesn't mean that there is any relation between between the text surrounding a hyperlink in LLM output and the text on the linked page.

AI agents can verify and summarize URLs, but a plain LLM can not.

I bow to your correction. I was using LLMs as a sloppy shorthand for modern AI agents with best interfaces.