Where Do You Get Your Information?*

Certainly not the New York Public Library

If you think you’re using AI to do your “original” research into how Basuki Tjahaja Purnama blasphemed the Quran during his Jakarta gubernatorial race, or that the Philippines had 6 million drug addicts when Rodrigo Duterte was running for president, or whether vaccines cause autism, or if Ivermectin works better in treating Covid, likely you aren’t.

Social Media Today recently published a study by Semrush, an online management and content marketing firm, showing that AI gets most of its information from, in order, Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube, Google, Yelp, and Facebook. (The chart above adds up to more than 100 percent because people use more than one source.)

“Today’s AI models are next to useless when you’re trying to get to an authoritative source. They’re only a tip sheet, and not a very good one,” said Russell Todd, a retired former professor at the University of Texas School of Journalism and Media in Austin and a former copy chief at the Wall Street Journal, in an interview. “You’re better off to pick up the phone and call someone who knows the turf. If you’re using AI as a writing tool, you’re just training it to replace you completely.”…

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