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Comment by rogerkirkness | Hacker News Reader

PSA: I did a similar thing using Claude about buying a 2012-2016 era Ford F150 and it was so good at providing information like this about each model year. I went with a 2014 since the V8 was most mature and 2012-2013 issues resolved, and got there in 2 minutes instead of having to surf through forums for hours.

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I really don't think learning to rely on these tools for product review is a good idea. The web shows how much gravity the advertising industry has. As soon as the number of people using llms like this become statistically significant, you can bet product placement will find its way into the training data. Betting on enshittification is easy money.

It's like the people who laud LLMs as a really powerful search tool.

Google used to be a really powerful and functional search tool! Then, the antagonistic process of SEO and the perverted incentives of the company building the search index also taking advertising dollars ensured it was always going to get shitty, and serve their needs above yours.

LLMs are the same. They WILL be made less effective for whatever you want. Because they are beholden to the people with the money. Those people don't want you to have an effective search tool.

Search engines were great for 10-15 years before enshittification took over. It might go somewhat faster with LLMs since the playbook is known. But that's still a long time, so why not make the most of it while it lasts? And something better may come after.

Claude only knows it because someone wrote this stuff somewhere

LLMs are running off other people's good will

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