I would lean towards disallowing those. With "According to a Google search ...", someone can ask for specific links (and indeed, people often say to link to those sources to begin with instead of invoking Google). With "According to AI ... " - why would most readers care what the AI thinks? It's not a reliable source! You might as well say "According to a stranger I just met and don't know ..."

If you're going to say that the AI said X, Y, Z, provide a rationale on why it is relevant. If you merely found X, Y and Z compelling, feel free to talk about it without mentioning AI.

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dataflow 3 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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BeetleB 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> 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.

In my experience, LLMs hallucinate citations like crazy. Over 50% of the times I've checked, the citation either didn't exist, or it did but didn't support the LLM's assertions.

This is true not just from the chat, but for Google AI summaries.

When the references are more often wrong than not, you can understand why many will simply downvote you for bringing LLM citations into the conversation. Why quote a habitual liar?

(If you look at my other comments, I'm actually in favor of using LLMs in some capacity for HN comments. Just not in this case.)

	▲	dataflow 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>> actually does cite sources that I feel appear plausible. > In my experience, LLMs hallucinate citations like crazy. Over 50% of the times I've checked, the citation either didn't exist, or it did but didn't support the LLM's assertions. Note that those are specifically not the cases where the AI is citing "sources that I feel appear plausible." (I also don't find over 50% hallucination to be accurate for Google AI summaries in my experience, but that depends on your queries, and in any case, I digress...) > When the references are more often wrong than not, you can understand why many will simply downvote you for bringing LLM citations into the conversation. Why quote a habitual liar? To be clear, I do understand both sides of the argument, and I don't think either side is unreasonable. I've also had the experience of being on both sides of this myself, and I don't think there's a clear-cut answer. I'm just hoping to get clarity on what the new policy is as far as this goes. I'm sure it'll be reevaluated either way as time goes on.