Works great when the output is small enough to unit test or immediately try in situations with no possible negative outcomes.
Anything larger? Skip the LLM slop and go to the source. You have to go to the source, anyway.
Yeah, and then check that. I don't get this argument at all.
People who uncritically swallow the first answer or two they get from Google have a name... but that would just derail the thread into politics.
It turns out that going from not knowing what you don't know to knowing what you don't know adds an order of magnitude improvement to people's experience.
Are you referring to the search tool? Like when you ask the LLM something beyond its cutoff date it searches and gives you what it searched?
While it's cool that that feature shows the sources, the core of the LLM still does not provide sources, again by design it forgets what the sources are, it cannot link to the common crawl datapoints.
4o can link to sources to some extent, but it sounds like it doesn't do "research-y" things at all unless you have a paid account. It works for me -- note how it cites the manufacturer's literature here: https://i.imgur.com/lRkH948.png -- but when I ask it the same thing in a private window it doesn't cite any sources: https://i.imgur.com/Kc6Y0IR.png .
So that does seem kind of lame. They will offer source citations in the free model the minute they realize they can deliver ads that way, I'm sure...
For example, have you ever personally verified that humans went to the moon? Have you ever done the experiments to prove the Earth is round?
I have, actually! Thanks, astronomy class!
I've even estimated the earth's diameter, and I was only like 30% off (iirc). Pretty good for the simplistic method and rough measurements we used.
Sometimes authorities are actually authoritative, though, particularly for technical, factual material. If I'm reading a published release date for a video game, directly from the publisher -- what is there to contest? Meanwhile, ask an LLM and you may have... mixed results, even if the date is within its knowledge cutoff.
Was it the stick on the earth and measuring the right triangle casted by the shadow?
IIRC you also had to do the same thing on another spot far apart and measure the difference between both triangles. At the same time.
I specifically remember that we measured how far the shadow moved over time using chalk. I think this was in lieu of having a second triangle somewhere else, although, for all I know we might have used a second reference distance.
Our campus had this elaborate outdoor "observatory" that had all sorts of interesting features. The gnomon was one of them, but there were other cool things, like IIRC there was a metal sculpture where Polaris would be seen through a central hole (and a guide inscribed in the concrete to figure out where to stand for that to happen -- I think it was based on viewing height).
For example, if I'm looking for some medical finding and I get to a source that's a clinical study from a reputable publication, I may be satisfied and stop there since this is not my area of expertise. However, a person with knowledge of the field may be able to parse the study and pick it apart better than I could. Hence, their search would not end there since they would be unsatisfied with just the source I was satisfied with.
On the other hand, having no verifiable sources should leave everyone unsatisfied.