So asking an LLM to work from memory will get you the general vibe of the thing from sources. The vibe as a vibe is actually very useful! It's a new variant of

So asking an LLM to work from memory will get you the general vibe of the thing from sources. The vibe as a vibe is actually very useful! It's a new variant of counting google hits for a term. But it doesn't really tell you more than that; and you can't treat it as fact. Same as with a smart person working from memory. They're smart, and their memory is good, but they could misremember after all. [1] If you ask your LLM to execute a search for you, congrats, you're one step further, now it can summarize the search results for you. But now you're back at the point you were before LLMs existed and we all relied on google. Just because google says something, doesn't mean it's true. Now both you and the LLM need to go work through the sources and figure out what's actually going on. The "ChatGPT says it's clearly absurd..." is missing the word "...because..." , and roughly a paragraph of support [1] (Before you complain: I'm not anthropomorphizing. You're anthropocentrizing! )