Comment by selestify
15 hours ago
Just ask for citations by forcing the LLM to provide a verbatim quote from a linked source. If the LLM is incapable of doing so without hallucinating (cough, Gemini, cough) use a better one.
I don't get the LLM hate on this site sometimes. Just because it is easy to use an LLM irresponsibly doesn't mean all LLM usage has to be irresponsible.
I think the problem is that the original recommendation here was "just use an LLM" not "use an LLM [in this responsible manner]".
As an anecdote: I know people currently preparing to file suit against a former roommate who decided to leave mid lease and stop paying because they had an LLM convince them that they could just do that (they definitely can't, it's not even close under local tenancy laws).
Which fits with my general impression that LLMs are extremely inclined to validate that you can do whatever you want to even when that's not how the law works and my expectation that using them naively for legal matters is a really bad idea.
And applied to this specific case I can easily imagine an LLM picking up on the commenters outrage and supporting them that they're right, when I tend to agree with the actual author's comment that it doesn't seem like they have any actual damages since they fixed it for $20 (not that I'm a lawyer).
I feel the same as you. Internally, I call this "LLM allergy".
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