You can have the same problem with Googling things, LLMs usually form conclusions I align with when I do the independent research. Google isn't anywhere near as good as it was 5 years ago. All the years of crippling their search ranking system and suppressing results has caught up to them to the point most LLMs are Google replacements.

In a work context, for me at least, this class of reply can actually be pretty useful. It indicates somebody already minimally investigated a thing and may have at least some information about it, but they're hedging on certainty by letting me know "the robots say."

It's a huge asterisk to avoid stating something as a fact, but indicates something that could/should be explored further.

(This would be nonsense if they sent me an email or wrote an issue up this way or something, but in an ad-hoc conversation it makes sense to me)

I think this is different than on HN or other message boards, it's not really used by people to hedge here, if they don't actually personally believe something to be the case (or have a question to ask) why are they posting anyway? No value there.

To my mind, it's like someone saying "I asked Fred down at the pub and he said...". It's someone stupidly repeating something that's likely stupid anyway.

These days, most people who try googling for answers end up reading an article which was generated by AI anyway. At least if you go right to the bot, you know what you're getting.

> When I hear "ChatGPT says..." on some topic at work, I interpret that as "Let me google that for you, only I neither care nor respect you enough to bother confirming that that answer is correct."

I have a less cynical take. These are casual replies, and being forthright about AI usage should be encouraged in such circumstances. It's a cue for you to take it with a grain of salt. By discouraging this you are encouraging the opposite: for people to mask their AI usage and pretend they are experts or did extensive research on their own.

If you wish to dismiss replies that admit AI usage you are free to do so. But you lose that freedom when people start to hide the origins of their information out of peer pressure or shame.

"lets ask the dipshit" is how my colleague phrases it

I disagree. It's not a potential avenue for further investigation. Imo ai should always be consulted