That’s because LLM’s generally don’t cite their sources. Web search is a tool outside of the LLM. Depending on the particular chat interface, there are any manner of tools in place to augment LLM capabilities/outputs, and they are constantly changing.
If one is trying to make an argument about the usefulness of LLMs, it’s irrelevant whether LLMs on their own can cite sources. If they can be trivially put into a system that can cite sources, that is a better measure of it’s usefulness.
I mean, it’s not trivial. There is a lot of work involved with enabling tool use at scale so that it works most of the time. Hiding that work makes it worse for the common user, because they aren’t necessarily going to understand the difference between platforms.
I agree that this is mostly OpenAI’s fault, though I also think people posting strong claims about LLMs online have a responsibility to know slightly more than the average user.
