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Comment by einsteinx2 | Hacker News Reader

I’ve noticed this trend in comments across the internet. Someone will ask or say something, the someone else will reply with “I asked ChatGPT and it says…” or “According to AI…”

ChatGPT is free and available to everyone, and so are a dozen other LLMs. If the person making the comment wanted to know what ChatGPT had to say, they could just ask it themselves. I guess people feel like they’re being helpful, but I just don’t get it.

Though with that said, I’m happy when they at least say it’s from an LLM. At least then I know I can ignore It. Worse is replying as if it’s their own answer, but really it’s just copy pasted from an LLM. Those are more insidious.

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Isn't it the modern equivalent of "let me Google that for you"?

My experience is that the vast majority of people do 0 research (AI assisted or not) before asking questions online. Questions that could have usually been answered in a few seconds if they had tried.

If someone preface a question by saying they've done their research but would like validation, then yes it's in incredibly poor taste.

There's seemingly a difference in motive. The people sharing AI responses seem to be from people fascinated by AI generally, and want to share the response.

The "let me Google that for you" was more trying to get people to look up trivial things on their own, rather than query some forum repeatedly.

exactly, the "i asked chatgpt" people give off 'im helping' vibes but in reality they are just annoying and clogging up the internet with spam that nobody asked for

they're more clueless than condescending

Let me google that for you was when a person e.g. asked "what's a tomato?", and you'd paste in the link http://www.google.com/search?q=what's+a+tomato

That's not like pasting in a screenshot or a copy/paste of an AI answer, it's being intentionally dismissive. You weren't actually doing the "work" for them, you were calling them lazy.

The way I usually see the AI paste being used is from people trying to refute something somebody said, but about a subject that they don't know anything about.

> Isn't it the modern equivalent of "let me Google that for you"?

No. With Google you get many answers. With AI you get one. Also we know that AI is unreliable with some possibility, it’s highly probable that you can get a better source on Google than that. This is especially bad when the question is something niche. So, it’s definitely a worse version of lmgtfy.

It is the modern equivalent of "let me Google that for you" except for that most of the people doing it don't seem to realize that they're telling the person to fuck off, while that absolutely was the intent with lmfgtfy.

Also lmgtfy was a one line comment, whereas these llm comments are sometimes multiple paragraphs.

> Isn't it the modern equivalent of "let me Google that for you"?

When you put it that way I guess it kind of is.

> If someone preface a question by saying they've done their research but would like validation, then yes it's in incredibly poor taste.

100% agree with you there

The unholy blend of that is when someone "asks Google" and regurgitates the AI summary.

udm=14 my beloved

>Isn't it the modern equivalent of "let me Google that for you"?

Which was just as irritating.

It was meant to be - the whole point of that meme was to shame/annoy lazy people into looking things up themselves, instead of asking random strangers on the internet.

And also just spouting unhinged shit divorced from reality, which is pretty common. You get tired enough dealing with these people that an AI response is warranted.

To modifying a hitchism.

> What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

Becomes

> That which can be asserted without thought can be dismissed without thought.

Since no current AI thinks but humans do I’m just going to dismiss anything an AI says out of hand because you are pushing the cost of parsing what it said onto me and off you and nah, ain’t accepting that.

Elegant and correct. It seems so obvious to me that if someone wanted a ChatGPT answer they would have sought it out for themselves and yet... it's happened to me more than a few times. I think some people think they are being clever and resourceful (or 'efficient') but it just dilutes their own authority on that which they were asked to opine.

People often don't want an AI answer because it won't readily agree with their worldview, particularly in politics.

Would the same thought apply to Wikipedia, though. If a user said "Well, according to Wikipedia" and blah blah blah, would that be dismissed out of hand.

If you copy-paste the first paragraph or the whole text of a Wikipedia page, then absolutely. If you have to dig in to a decently log page to find a small blurb, highlight the text you believe to be germane to whatever point is being made, and also provide the reference listed on Wikipedia, and/or provide some reasoning as to why you believe that to be correct, then no.

One of these courses of action is helpful, while the other one very much isn't. Copy-pasting 5 paragraphs of ChatGPT is equally not helpful. If however find one small blurb in that ChatGPT output that's germane to whatever point is being made, and copy and paste that, along with a source and/or your reasoning as to why that is correct, then you're probably back to being helpful again. This however is not what most instances of 'chatGPT said' are. Most of those are 'chatGPT said [insert word salad here]' or '[chatGPT said [thing obvious from even the most cursory knowledge about the subject at hand]'.

That's wonderfully succinct argument.

It hinges assuming that ChatGPT does not thinking, which is clearly false.

Hell, Feynman said as much in 1985. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipRvjS7q1DI

I really don't think Feynman said ChatGPT was "thinking" in 1985.

He was referring to computers and program execution in general.

He was wrong. He wasn't right about everything just because he's reddit's favourite physicist (after Neil Degrass Tyson).

Surely he is not wrong just because you say so.

The irony is that the disclosure of “I asked ChatGPT and it says…” is done as a courtesy to let the reader be informed. Given the increasing backlash against that disclosure, people will just stop disclosing which is worse for everyone.

The only workaround is to just text as-is and call it out when it's wrong/bad, AI-generated or otherwise, as we've done before 2023.

I think it's fine to not disclose it. Like, don't you find "Sent from my iPhone" that iPhones automatically add to emails annoying? Technicalities like that don't bring anything to the conversation.

I think typically, the reason people are disclosing their usage of LLMs is that they want offload responsibility. To me it's important to see them taking responsibility for their words. You wouldn't blame Google for bad search results, would you? You can only blame the entity that you can actually influence.

That’s true. Unfortunately the ideal takeaway from that sentiment should be “don’t reply with copy pasted LLM answers”, but I know that what you’re saying will happen instead.

Exactly, it is important and courteous still to cite your resources and tools.

I find a good workaround is to just say "some very quick research of my own leads me to ...", and then summarize what ChatGPT said. Especially if you are using e.g. an LLM with search enabled, this is borderline almost literally true, but makes it clear you aren't just stating something completely on your own.

Of course, you should still actually verify the outputs. If you do, there is not much wrong with not mentioning using the LLM, since you've don't the most important thing anyway (not be lazy in your response). If you don't verify, you had better say that.

Except it isn't. It's a disclosure to say "If I'm wrong, it's not my fault".

Because if they'd actually read the output, then cross-checked it and developed some confidence in the opinion, they wouldn't put what they perceive as the most important part up front ("I used ChatGPT") - they'd put the conclusion.

It isn't this cut and dry. You can cross-check and verify, but still have blind spots (or know that the tools have biases as well), and so consider it still important to mention the LLM use up front.

Or, if you preface a comment with "I am not an expert, but...", it is not often about seeking to avoid all blame, but to simply give the reader reasonable context.

Of course, you are right, it is also sometimes just lazy dodging.

> someone else will reply with “I asked ChatGPT and it says…” or “According to AI…”

I had a consultant I’m working with have an employee do that to me. I immediately insisted that every hour they’ve billed on that person’s name be refunded.

How did that go?

> How did that go?

They removed the analyst from our project and credited the hours along with a bonus.

Indeed. On the other hand, there's a difference between "I one-prompted some mini LLM" and "A deep-thinking LLM aided me through research with fact-checking, agents, tools and lots of input from me." While both can be phrased with “I asked ChatGPT and it says…” or “According to AI…”, the latter would not annoy me.

LLMs are incapable of fact checking. They have no concept of facts.

They can cite their sources which can be double checked by the user and verified. I guess at that point the user would just tell you what they found and use the same sources and people would be way less hostile than they currently are.

Whether the hatred is justified or not, the openness of said hostility just breeds users who'll hide their usage and deliver the same content, just repackaged enough in attempt to throw off the BS smell. And now you, the user, might be two paragraphs into something that may be truthful enough to fool you unless you're also an expert on the topic. I'd rather know up front what their source was and weigh the data with that in mind.

Otherwise we're now all going to have to assume everything we read is AI generated and suspect everyone else is going to look at our own content under such a microscope. Maybe that's a positive though.

I think you are misreading the GP, they said "A deep-thinking LLM aided me through research *with fact-checking, agents, tools and lots of input from me*", which I read as implying they did the fact checking, and not the LLM.

It must be the randomness built into LLMs that makes people think it's something worth sharing. I guess it's no different from sharing a cool Minecraft map with your friends or something. The difference is Minecraft is fun, reading LLM content is not.

Using ChatGPT can be a good tool to figure out naming and docs.

If a stupid LLM doesn't understand what something might be, chances are your user won't either.

I have coworkers who, on a zoom meeting, will respond to questions and discussions by spamming the zoom chat with paste-dumps of ChatGPT, etc. So frustrating and tiresome.

If possible I just go silent when people start copy and pasting ChatGPT at me. Only works in certain cases like Teams/Slack DMs, but it does remove a distraction from my day.

I start responding again when they can be bothered to formulate their own thoughts.

Exactly what I came here to say. It's not wrong to ask ChatGPT for advice; it can occasionally be very useful. But if I want chatGPT's opinion, I can ask for it myself. It's pointless to ask ChatGPT to review someone else's code. Use it to review your own before you submit it for review by your coworkers.

This is not a problem I've run into fortunately, but I'm appalled that this exists.

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