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Comment by NoTeslaThrow | Hacker News Reader

> Please run the same query past ELIZA and Gemini 2.5 (https://aistudio.google.com/prompts/new_chat) and report back.

I don't see much difference—you still have to take any output skeptically. I can't claim to have ever used gemini, but last I checked it still can't cite sources, which would at least assist with validation.

I'm just saying this didn't introduce any fundamentally new capabilities—we've always been able to GIGO-excuse all chatbots. The "soft" applications of LLMs have always been approximated by heuristics (e.g. generation of content of unknown use or quality). Even the summarization tech LLMs seem to offer don't seem to substantially improve over the NLP-heuristic-driven predecessors.

But yea, if you really want to generate content of unknown quality, this is a massive leap. I just don't see this as very interesting.

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> I can't claim to have ever used gemini, but last I checked it still can't cite sources, which would at least assist with validation.

Yes, it can cite sources, just like any other major LLM service out there. Gemini, Claude, Deepseek, and ChatGPT are the ones I personally validated this with, but I bet other major LLM services can do so as well.

Just tested this using Gemini with “Is fluoride good for teeth? Cite sources for any of the claims” prompt, and it listed every claim as a bullet point accompanied by the corresponding source. The sources were links to specific pages addressing the claims from CDC, Cleveland Clinic, John Hopkins, and NIDCR. I clicked on each of the links to verify that they were corroborating what Gemini response was saying, and they were.

In fact, it would more often than not include sources even without me explicitly asking for sources.

They don't make up the sources or include sources that don't include the citation anymore?

I get that sometimes, but you click the link and very easily determine whether the source exists or not.

> Yes, it can cite sources, just like any other major LLM service out there.

Let's see an example:

Ask if america was ever a democracy and tell us what it uses as sources to evaluate its ability to function. Language really shows its true colors when you commit to floating signifiers.

I asked gemini "was america ever a democracy"? And it confidently responded "While the ideal of democracy has always been a guiding principle in the United States", which is a blatant lie, and provided no sources. The next prompt, "was america every a democracy? Please cite sources" gives a mealy-mouthed reply hedging on the definition of democracy... which it refuses to cite. If I ask it "will america ever be democratic" it just vomits up excuses about democracy being a principal and not measurable. With no sources. Etc. this is not a useful tool for things humans already do well. This is a PR megaphone with little utility outside of shitty copy editing.

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