If my friend has a million times more knowledge than the average human being, then I'm willing to put up with a 30% error rate on references.

And I'm talking about references when doing deep academic research. Looking them up is absolutely a productive use of time -- I'm asking for the references so I can read them. I'm not asking for them for fun.

Remember, it's hundreds of times easier to verify information than it is to find it in the first place. That's the basic principle of what makes LLM's so incredibly valuable.