Humans skip attribution in their conversations all the time when it's not the subject. Why machine should be held to some different standards, especially if we want them to sound and behave naturally?
"I saw on the web the other day" is not attribution, it's basically an interjection that makes the conversation smoother. Most of time it means absolutely nothing, except for maybe "it's not my direct experience" at best (and AFAIK LLMs today don't really have any agency, so this disclaimer is moot/noise).
Sure, "I've read an article on Acme Daily" happens, but personally I typically do this as a cue for the listener to cut me off with "ah, yes, I've read this too", saving us both time. Other use case is to give signal about authenticity of the information: not a credit, again - just an indirect indicator of trustworthiness or reliability (when I hear "The Onion reports" - it's surely not about the website, it's about the following being satire). YMMV, of course. I sure want an LLM to write this, but only when it matters to me personally (not the website authors, they aren't a party in our conversation). Just like a human would.
Similarly, I don't think anyone ever said "I've found this on coolrecipes.com" unironically if the conversation is about the recipe instead of a source. Obviously, attributing it to someone both parties know - like a relative, neighbor or a celebrity is a different story - roughly the same as with the news example above. But if you hear "found on coolrecipes.com" it it's most likely an ad. And what I want to say is here is that LLMs today are a breath of fresh air - compared to modern enshittified search engines - specifically because they're not ad- and SEO-ruined (yet). Let us please keep it this way for as long as possible.
> Humans skip attribution in their conversations all the time
ChatGPT is not a human. If a news site was to publish some information on their website without attribution, this would be a problem. ChatGPT is more analogous to a news site then some person you have a conversation with.
"I saw on the web the other day" is not attribution, it's basically an interjection that makes the conversation smoother. Most of time it means absolutely nothing, except for maybe "it's not my direct experience" at best (and AFAIK LLMs today don't really have any agency, so this disclaimer is moot/noise).
Sure, "I've read an article on Acme Daily" happens, but personally I typically do this as a cue for the listener to cut me off with "ah, yes, I've read this too", saving us both time. Other use case is to give signal about authenticity of the information: not a credit, again - just an indirect indicator of trustworthiness or reliability (when I hear "The Onion reports" - it's surely not about the website, it's about the following being satire). YMMV, of course. I sure want an LLM to write this, but only when it matters to me personally (not the website authors, they aren't a party in our conversation). Just like a human would.
Similarly, I don't think anyone ever said "I've found this on coolrecipes.com" unironically if the conversation is about the recipe instead of a source. Obviously, attributing it to someone both parties know - like a relative, neighbor or a celebrity is a different story - roughly the same as with the news example above. But if you hear "found on coolrecipes.com" it it's most likely an ad. And what I want to say is here is that LLMs today are a breath of fresh air - compared to modern enshittified search engines - specifically because they're not ad- and SEO-ruined (yet). Let us please keep it this way for as long as possible.