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by andrepd 22 hours ago
LLMs routinely hallucinate sources. I guess that's why some people feel that way.
2 comments

Right, but is there a difference between searching, say "acetaminophen and ibuprofen combined in emergency department settings" on google/ddg and asking an AI to give me primary sources for the same - if i am going to use the primary source anyhow? I just mention "i used AI to find this" because usually there's no good way to do a google search, or there wasn't the last time i tried.

For example, is glyphosate the active ingredient in roundup? there are studies that suggest not. I can't remember the university, i can remember the rough decade (2010s). all i know for sure is that someone showed that glyphosate isn't the active ingredient, really.

Deepseek can't find it. ddg doesn't come up with it immediately. I might try "deep think" mode on some other AI later, or use an older LLM model i have locally to see. I have the pdf, i just didn't rename it to be searchable! doggone it.

LLM assisted search is now one of the best ways to look into dense and obscure topics though, particularly given as google search quality has degraded. All it needs is for you to read the sources.

Source hallucination has also come down tremendously.