A look into our enshittified LLM (Large Language Model) search future. My wife and I were curious about the etymology of 'snob', so we googled it and got this LLM summarized answer from Google's LLM "enhanced" search engine:

"Where does the word snob originate from?"

"The word snob is said to have arisen from the custom of writing “s. nob.”, that is, 'sine nobilitate'"

The problem is that the source (Merriam-Webster) used this as an example of what they called a "spurious etymology" - a fake answer. The LLM ignored this and hallucinated the incorrect answer. Someone who casually referenced this would walk away misinformed.

Can you imagine this happening with, say, medical software? I can and it's not good.