Hallucinated citations got attention because they were easy to check
RexDouglass · x · 2026-07-23
The thread argues that hallucinated citations became popular because they were easy to verify.
- People were not suddenly caring about bibliographies; they just wanted a cheap way to check machine-generated work.
- The reply extends the earlier point: many fields already have weak human citation practices, so AI only exposed an existing verification problem.
- The practical lesson is that verification cost matters more than the superficial quality of the citation itself.
Related event: Verification Cost Emerges as Core AI Challenge(4 posts)→
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