Every other week, I bring myself to get excited about LLMs as a research tool. And every single time, there are some more or less obvious inconsistencies in the result, which means that I have to now fact-check everything if I care about the accuracy of the result.
But I don’t want to be a fact-checker. Fact-checking feels defensive. I’m spending my time on making something less bad, and the ideal outcome is that it’s a complete waste of time, because the original state turned out to be correct.
It’s also time-intensive. When all is said and done, I usually have spent almost as much time on it as I would have spent researching it from primary sources. The difference is that my own growth and learning is much greater when doing the research myself.
When I fact-check an LLM, I’m investing in the LLM.
When I learn about something from first principles, I’m investing in myself.
Pretty clear choice, if you ask me.