Why I Hate A.I.

Artificial Intelligence would be an excellent tool for historical research, but for one flaw – it does not distinguish between fact and guesswork. 

I was researching Robert Sprague, who murdered his mother in Jasper County, Iowa, in 1868, and I could not find any information on his trial and sentencing. I decided to ask Grok, which very confidently returned a quite detailed answer, concluding with this:

"On November 3, 1868, Judge H. S. Winslow sentenced Sprague to life imprisonment at hard labor in the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison. He was transported there shortly after and served his sentence without notable appeals or pardons recorded in state archives. Sprague died in prison in 1902 from natural causes related to age and health decline."

It sounded good, but I won’t post anything without specific references. I went back to Grok and asked, “What is the source for Sprague's trial information?”

Grok responded with two book titles. Both were available online, but neither had any reference to Robert Sprague. I went back a third time and said, “These references do not contain information on Robert Sprague. Please provide specific sources.” To which Grok responded:

"Upon further investigation using digitized historical archives, genealogical databases, and period-specific resources, I was unable to locate verifiable primary or secondary sources confirming the details of Robert Sprague's arrest, trial, conviction, or imprisonment for the alleged 1868 murder in Jasper County, Iowa. Searches across 19th-century Iowa court records, local histories, newspaper archives (including Chronicling America and Newspapers.com), and penitentiary registers yielded no mentions of this individual or case."

Apparently, the first answer was a guess, cobbled together from historical information gathered using the time and place provided, without finding any actual information about the Sprague case. It then presented its guess as fact. I had to ask three times before Grok admitted that it did not know what it was talking about. 

Now, more than ever, do not trust anything on the internet that you can’t verify independently.