A third of Perplexity's citations don't contain the number they're cited for

Gecko4072

I noticed this personally. Saw a citation with a preview for source A, which I knew was reliable. Checked, and it referenced a Reddit article and various other less reliable sources. Was a direct citation too that actually wasn't.

tempfile

BS machine produces BS; in other news water is wet and sky is blue.

motbus3

I felt that myself. And I have the same problem with gemini

betree

100% my experience with this service. The intent is good, but it seems they're still in the "fake it until you make it" stage.

gamblor956

This is why lawyers have been getting in trouble using AI to review case law or (worse) to generate documents. It creates citations and references that look close enough to be plausible but are just made up of thin air. CA passed a law explicitly requiring lawyers to review AI-generated documents that is now before the governor for signing (previously, lawyers were ethically expected to review documents submitted to the court or provided to clients but that doesn't have the same level of force as an explicit requirement).

abdullahkhalids

If you are building your own harness that does correct citations, is the correct thing to give AI access to some deterministic tool that allows it to actually copy paste parts of documents its reading (with links), rather than stochastic reproduction that they do by default?

wrs

Same is true of Google search “summaries” where quite often I click on the link provided and it doesn’t support the statement Google made. BTW, this post would be more convincing if it wasn’t written in Claude voice itself!

cmiles8

This plus AI just citing AI slop. Theres a real downward spiral unfolding with the quality of information available on the internet.

asmodeuslucifer

That's the one that powers Truth Social Trump Media and Technology Group announced that it partnered with Perplexity to test and integrate an AI search feature, referred to as Truth Social AI or Truth Search AI, directly into the Truth Social platform. (I just use the free account from truth+ to waste their money) how do you reverse a linked list in python Answers Sources Use either an iterative pointer-reversal approach or a recursive approach. The standard iterative version is the most common and runs in (O(n)) time with (O(1)) extra space: class ListNode: def __init__(self, val=0, next=None): self.val = val self.next = next def reverse_list(head): prev = None curr = head while curr: nxt = curr.next curr.next = prev prev = curr curr = nxt return prev If you already have a Python list, reversing it is simpler with slicing: items[::-1], but that is not a linked list reversal.

wopwops

My favorite is hallucinated slop with sources that 404.

mandolingual

"The unit above is the citation, not the claim." The RPM of the slop ouroboros ever rises.

slaw3

Unsurprising, if you’ve ever clicked some of these citations they always seemed like they’re from the back alley of the internet Now do OpenEvidence :)

nightpool

I don't even know if I disagree with this post, but this seems really astroturfed. Why are there two anti-Perplexity articles from independent research firms with identical websites on the front-page of HN right now, submitted by the same person? Am I going crazy? (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49536375 , left a comment there also)

breakpointalpha

This article appears to be a coordinated attack on Perplexity. Also posted today is this HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49536375 Containing this link: https://trellner.com/reports/manufactured-sources-behind-ai-... Which has the exact same layout and very similar About page as "trellner.com" https://hausresearch.com/about/ https://trellner.com/about/