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Comment by DivingForGold

9 months ago

[flagged]

I know hearing this gets old, however, please review sources outside of LLMs for accuracy. LLMs take a whole bunch off stuff from all over the internet and distill it down to something you can consume. Those sources include everything from reddit to a certain de-wormer that folks still think treats COVID (side note: I've a few long COVID victims in a support group I am in, and they are not happy about the disinfo that was spread, at any rate)...LLMs/"AI" does not and cannot innovate, it can only take all existing information it knows, mash it all together, and present you with a result according to what the model is trained on.

I'm not against AI summaries being on HN, however, users should verify and cite sources so others can verify.

However, I'm just a normal nerd that wants to fact check stuff. Perhaps I'm wrong in wanting to do this. We'll see.

  • I have significant experience in polymer chemistry, as an experiment, I decided to ask gemini some very specific questions to try and back it into a corner, so to speak. It blew me away with the answer, discussing quite a bit of info I was not even aware of.

  • > I'm not against AI summaries being on HN, however, users should verify and cite sources so others can verify.

    I don't see how they contribute anything to a discussion. Even a speculative comment organically produced is more worthwhile than feeding a slop machine back into itself. I don't go out for coffee to discuss LLM summaries with friends, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to do that here.

    Earlier today I asked Gemini Pro to find information on a person's death that was turning up nothing for me otherwise, and it just imagined finding verbatim Obituary quotes in every source, cobbled together vaguely related names, plausible bits and pieces from wherever, almost like it was 2023 again.

    It ain't search, and it ain't worthwhile; I'd much rather someone ask an llm the question and then post a question out of curiosity based on it, but without the summary itself

    • It is search if you ask it to produce a list of links.

      It does well at filtering information for you.

      Going to primary sources is required to verify what it says but it can reduce the leg work rather a lot.

      9 replies →

  • I've had quite good luck asking Gemini and ChatGPT to include links to research papers for every claim they make. Not only can I review at least the abstracts but I find when I do this, they'll retract some of the hallucinations they've have made in prior messages. It almost seems (and maybe they do) in their web searching tools, reread the content they include. Thus, greatly reducing errors, with minimal extra effort on my part.

> Could it be that this organism switches to anaerobic respiration when it finds itself inside cancer tissue

Unlikely. The leading hypothesis is that mitochondria are a part of the apoptosis cycle, so cells need to disable them to become cancerous. This is called the Warburg effect.

There are several drugs that target this mechanism, inhibiting the anaerobic metabolism. They are effective initially, but cancers always find ways to work around them.