If a scientist uses an LLM to write a paper with fabricated citations - that’s a crappy scientist.
AI is not the problem, laziness and negligence is. There needs to be serious social consequences to this kind of thing, otherwise we are tacitly endorsing it.
And yet, we’re not supposed to criticize the tool or its makers? Clearly there’s more problems in this world than «lazy carpenters»?
Some people take that to mean that responses from LLMs are (by human standards) "always correct" and "based on knowledge", while this is a misunderstanding about how LLMs work. They don't know "correct" nor do they have "knowledge", they have tokens, that come after tokens, and that's about it.
This is not what you are being sold though. They are not selling you "tokens". Check their marketing articles and you will not see the word token or synonym on any of their headings or subheadings. You are being sold these abilities:
- “Generate reports, draft emails, summarize meetings, and complete projects.”
- “Automate repetitive tasks, like converting screenshots or dashboards into presentations … rearranging meetings … updating spreadsheets with new financial data while retaining the same formatting.”
- "Support-type automation: e.g. customer support agents that can summarize incoming messages, detect sentiment, route tickets to the right team."
- "For enterprise workflows: via Gemini Enterprise — allowing firms to connect internal data sources (e.g. CRM, BI, SharePoint, Salesforce, SAP) and build custom AI agents that can: answer complex questions, carry out tasks, iterate deliverables — effectively automating internal processes."
These are taken straight from their websites. The idea that you are JUST being sold tokens is as hilariously fictional as any company selling you their app was actually just selling you patterns of pixels on your screen.