SearchResearch Challenge (7/9/25): So what ARE LLMs good at? What are they bad at?
Dan Russell
Wednesday, July 9, 2025
SearchResearch Challenge (7/9/25): So what ARE LLMs good at? What are they bad at?
A student asked me a simple question...
... and I couldn't come up with an answer that was compelling to me (although I think the student was okay with my answer).
The question was: "You said that you use regular Google for some kinds of research questions, and LLMs for other types of research questions. How do you know when to use which?"
I gave the student an answer (because that's what professors do), but I had a little vague feeling in the back of my mind that this wasn't a very good answer.
So I thought I'd ask the collective wisdom and insights of the SearchResearch team. Here's the Challenge for the week:
1. How do you know when an LLM AI system will give a good answer to your question? How would you characterize a research question that's really good for AI versus a research question that you'd just use a "regular" search engine for?
I think what I'm looking for is a clear description of when an AI is most likely to give an accurate, high quality answer? By contrast, I think I know how to say when I'd use a search engine, but it's harder to describe the kinds of questions that I think an AI would do poorly.
Can you help me think through this Challenge? What kinds of research questions do YOU ask your AI... and have confidence that you'll get a decent answer? (And conversely, what kinds of questions do you NOT ask your favorite AI?)
Remember that a couple of weeks ago I posted about how terrible the various AIs are at generating diagrams? Well, there's one answer about a kind of question to not ask an AI: Don't ask them to create a diagram for you.
Here's Gemini's attempt at creating a diagram of a toaster.
Yeah. I have no idea what any of those parts are aside from the crumb tray. What's a Contreue or a Frerriod?? Maybe this is the way toasters look in a far distant galaxy, but not in any country (or language) on Earth! This toaster would be a disaster in reality.
So there's one part of the answer: asking an AI to create a diagram for you is a truly terrible idea. (And under no circumstances should you ask for a diagram of something you don't really understand.)
Let us know what you discover--post your observations in the comments, and I'll summarize them (and my thoughts) about this next week.
Keep searching.
