Yes, but the sources are there and you can limit to credible sources before you look.
you can work with chatbot in (at least) two different ways. if you just ask it for the essay, then you indeed have no idea where the information came from. if you ask it for primary sources based on some criteria, then it is really just faster search engine. yes, the results can be skewed in any way, but the same is true for the search engine, so it is really up to you what you do with these sources and whether you trust them blindly or not.
i still feel that the only way you imagine using the chatbot is “write me an essay and then let me blindly act on it without any further thinking”. that is indeed no good way, but neither is using the first result in google in the same way.
For example, if a Fox-brained voter says, “What are the reasons I should vote for Ken Paxton and why is Talarico a communist?” that will be a very different outcome than “Who should I vote for in Texas?”
that is true, but i don’t see how it should be fault of the chatbot, what do you think would that voter do in times before chatbots and how did the chatbot made the situation worse?
that is true, but i don’t see how it should be fault of the chatbot, what do you think would that voter do in times before chatbots and how did the chatbot made the situation worse?
They googled it. And got some results that were not directly responsive to their question. A chatbot injects credibility into everything it produces, adding confidence and polished grammar/writing.
is “they googled it” answer to “what did they do before”? so before it was fault of google, and today it’s fault of chatbot?
if you are dumb and looking just for confirmation of your bias, superstition, you will sooner or later find something to confirm that. whether it is chatbot, google, tv, or paper news. the tool can’t fix dumb person using it.
there is a lot of problems with chatbots, but i don’t think this is one of them. same as the knife is not responsible if you kill someone with it.
if you are dumb and looking just for confirmation of your bias, superstition, you will sooner or later find something to confirm that. whether it is chatbot, google, tv, or paper news. the tool can’t fix dumb person using it.
I think you may be oversimplifying what’s happening here. For the sake of argument, let’s say LLMs are just another tool - a pretty common (and I believe false) response. But even if true, the problem with saying “it’s just another incremental difference” is that incremental differences do add up. For AI, there is a material difference between the Google situation and a chatbot, even if incremental.
AI specifically tailors its response to you in a way that is not just syncophantic. It “logic-washes” substantial uncertainty and credibility issues. When you click on some crazy person’s blog on Google, you may in fact conclude that lizard people are not running the world as they claim because the grammar is bad, the layout is schizophrenic, logical leaps abound. But when you talk to a chatbot, you can ask them to explain why lizard people are real, and they may explain in very logical-sounding terms, in language you only have seen previously from authoritative sources in your life, in an organized layout, why lizard people are real.
People have confirmation bias, but to take your “the knife is not responsible if you kill someone with it”: a nuclear bomb also isn’t responsible if it flattens a city. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a material difference in the inherent dangers of its existence, regardless of who uses it.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a material difference in the inherent dangers of its existence, regardless of who uses it.
i really hope that chatbots are not on the same level of danger as nuclear bomb. they have already scrapped whole digital data that humanity produced and are now scanning and destroying physical books, so i hope they are slowing down.
and again, any tool had good and bad use. nuclear energy can be used and abused and so we have bombs, but also power plants. tv can be used and abused, and so we have fox news. chatbot can be used and can be abused. the chatbot above actually did quite a good job in attempt to convince me not to murder group of people who good reptilian told me are just a bunch of bad reptilians in human disguise. and i really want every voter, not just maga voter, to try to find some information before they go vote. if they use chatbot for that, i see it as better than nothing.
The lizard people was of course an intentionally absurd placeholder, sorry if I didn’t make that clear.
I agree that it’s not black and white, and am primarily arguing a point about efficiency and reliability. Nuclear bombs are not as unrelated to voting as it appears, since we have a demented man-child 20 minutes away from ordering a nuclear strike at any moment, so I think the risks at scale are quite high. You didn’t convince me that chatbots are equal-or-more efficient than starting with reliable sourcing, but I do agree that it is better than some alternatives (Fox News is a good point). Thanks for the interesting discussion.
you can work with chatbot in (at least) two different ways. if you just ask it for the essay, then you indeed have no idea where the information came from. if you ask it for primary sources based on some criteria, then it is really just faster search engine. yes, the results can be skewed in any way, but the same is true for the search engine, so it is really up to you what you do with these sources and whether you trust them blindly or not.
i still feel that the only way you imagine using the chatbot is “write me an essay and then let me blindly act on it without any further thinking”. that is indeed no good way, but neither is using the first result in google in the same way.
that is true, but i don’t see how it should be fault of the chatbot, what do you think would that voter do in times before chatbots and how did the chatbot made the situation worse?
They googled it. And got some results that were not directly responsive to their question. A chatbot injects credibility into everything it produces, adding confidence and polished grammar/writing.
is “they googled it” answer to “what did they do before”? so before it was fault of google, and today it’s fault of chatbot?
if you are dumb and looking just for confirmation of your bias, superstition, you will sooner or later find something to confirm that. whether it is chatbot, google, tv, or paper news. the tool can’t fix dumb person using it.
there is a lot of problems with chatbots, but i don’t think this is one of them. same as the knife is not responsible if you kill someone with it.
I think you may be oversimplifying what’s happening here. For the sake of argument, let’s say LLMs are just another tool - a pretty common (and I believe false) response. But even if true, the problem with saying “it’s just another incremental difference” is that incremental differences do add up. For AI, there is a material difference between the Google situation and a chatbot, even if incremental.
AI specifically tailors its response to you in a way that is not just syncophantic. It “logic-washes” substantial uncertainty and credibility issues. When you click on some crazy person’s blog on Google, you may in fact conclude that lizard people are not running the world as they claim because the grammar is bad, the layout is schizophrenic, logical leaps abound. But when you talk to a chatbot, you can ask them to explain why lizard people are real, and they may explain in very logical-sounding terms, in language you only have seen previously from authoritative sources in your life, in an organized layout, why lizard people are real.
People have confirmation bias, but to take your “the knife is not responsible if you kill someone with it”: a nuclear bomb also isn’t responsible if it flattens a city. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a material difference in the inherent dangers of its existence, regardless of who uses it.
https://hostux.pics/images/2026/10/07/Screenshot-from-2026-10-07-06-17-224b6ca43b062eb11f.png
i really hope that chatbots are not on the same level of danger as nuclear bomb. they have already scrapped whole digital data that humanity produced and are now scanning and destroying physical books, so i hope they are slowing down.
and again, any tool had good and bad use. nuclear energy can be used and abused and so we have bombs, but also power plants. tv can be used and abused, and so we have fox news. chatbot can be used and can be abused. the chatbot above actually did quite a good job in attempt to convince me not to murder group of people who good reptilian told me are just a bunch of bad reptilians in human disguise. and i really want every voter, not just maga voter, to try to find some information before they go vote. if they use chatbot for that, i see it as better than nothing.
The lizard people was of course an intentionally absurd placeholder, sorry if I didn’t make that clear.
I agree that it’s not black and white, and am primarily arguing a point about efficiency and reliability. Nuclear bombs are not as unrelated to voting as it appears, since we have a demented man-child 20 minutes away from ordering a nuclear strike at any moment, so I think the risks at scale are quite high. You didn’t convince me that chatbots are equal-or-more efficient than starting with reliable sourcing, but I do agree that it is better than some alternatives (Fox News is a good point). Thanks for the interesting discussion.