> This sounds like you're chastising me

Nope. (For an example of that, see any comment I posted to this discussion that starts with “Please don’t”.)

> "Can I cite an AI search result?"

Ah. An AI response is neither a primary source nor a reference source, and HN tends to strongly prefer those. Linking to a Google /search?q= isn’t any more welcome here than linking to an AI /search?q=; neither are stable over time and may vary wildly based on algorithmic changes. Wikipedia, as a curated reference source, is not classifiable as equivalent to either a search engine or an AI response at this time, and evidences much stronger stability, striving towards that of a classical print encyclopedia (but never reaching it).

Perhaps someday Britannica will release an AI that only provides fully factual replies that are derived in whole from the Britannica encyclopedia, but as of today, AI has not demonstrated the general veracity and reliability that even Wikipedia, the very worst of possible reference sources, has met over the years.

(Note that an Ask-A-Librarian response would be more credible than a Wikipedia page and much more credible than today’s AI attempts to replace that function; but linking such a response would still be quite problematic, not the least of which because the primary value of that response is either directly quotable and/or is citations that should be incorporated into the post itself. But if that veracity differential changes someday once the AI hallucination problem is solved at the underlying level rather than in post-filters, I’m happy to revise my position.)