For reference, the point here isn't to say "what AI thinks", but what you found with the help of AI. The majority of the cases where I would say "according to AI, <blah>" are where <blah> actually does cite sources that I feel appear plausible. Sometimes they're links, sometimes they would be other publications not necessarily a click away. Sometimes I could independently verify them by spending half an hour researching (which is), sometimes I can't. Sometimes I could spend half an hour verifying them independently, sometimes I can't do that but they still seem worthwhile.

> If you merely found X, Y and Z compelling, feel free to talk about it without mentioning AI.

I think you're seeing this as too black-and-white, and missing the heart of the issue.

The purpose of mentioning AI is to convey the level of (un)certainty as accurately as possible. The most accurate way to do that would often be to mention any use of AI, rather than hiding it.

If AI tells me that it believes X is true because of links A and B that it cites, and I find those links compelling, then I absolutely want to mention that AI gave me those links because I have no clue whether the model had any reason to bias itself toward those sources, or whether alternate links may have existed that stated otherwise.

Whereas if a normal web search just gives links that mention terms from my query, then I get a chance to see the other links too, and I end up being the one who actually compare the contents of the different pages and figure out which one is most convincing.

Depending on various factors, such as the nature of the question and the level of background knowledge I have on the topic myself, one of these can provide a more useful response than the other -- but only if I convey the uncertainty around it accurately.

I constantly read those comments and I personally have conflicting opinion with them. On one hand, it's interesting to compare what is coming out of models, but on the other hand, LLMs are all non-deterministic, so results will be fairly random. On top of that, everybody has a different "skill" level when prompting. In addition, models are constantly changing, therefore "I asked chatGPT and it said..." means nothing when there is a new version every few months, not to mention you can often pick one of 10+ flavors from every provider, and even those are not guaranteed to not be changed under the hood to some degree over time.

I explained this in a bit more depth in an adjacent reply (feel free to take a look) but obtaining the source from AI doesn't achieve the same thing. For example, there might be other links that contradict that source, which the AI wouldn't cite. Knowing that AI picked the "best" one vs. a human is incredibly relevant when assigning and weighing credibility.