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But is "I asked chatgpt" assigning any authority to it? I use precisely that sentence as a shorthand for "I didn't know, looked it up in the most convenient way, and it sounded plausible enough to pass on".

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In my own experience, the vast majority of people using this phrase ARE using it as a source of authority. People will ask me about things I am an actual expert in, and then when they don’t like my response, hit me with the ol’ “well, I asked chatGPT and it said…”

I think you are misunderstanding them. I also frequently cite ChatGPT, as a way to accurately convey my source, not as a way to claim it as authoritative.

I think you are in the minority of people who use that phrase.

I have interrogated it in those cases. I was not misunderstanding.

It's a social-media-level of fact checking, that is to say, you feel something is right but have no clue if it actually is. If you had a better source for a fact, you'd quote that source rather than the LLM.

Just do the research, and you don't have to qualify it. "GPT said that Don Knuth said..." Just verify that Don said it, and report the real fact! And if something turns out to be too difficult to fact check, that's still valuable information.

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