Simon Willison’s Weblog

My trepidation extends to complex literature searches. I use LLMs as secondary librarians when I’m doing research. They reliably find primary sources (articles, papers, etc.) that I miss in my initial searches.

But these searches are dangerous. I distrust LLM librarians. There is so much data in the world: you can (in good faith!) find evidence to support almost any position or conclusion. ChatGPT is not a human, and, unlike teachers & librarians & scholars, ChatGPT does not have a consistent, legible worldview. In my experience, it readily agrees with any premise you hand it — and brings citations. It may have read every article that can be read, but it has no real opinion — so it is not a credible expert.

— Ben Stolovitz, How I use AI