It's not just about factual knowledge and its correctness, but especially about critical thinking abilities. As soon as we started printing books, looking up knowledge was never an issue. LLMs don't change that (even with limited reliability). But was has been an issue is using this knowledge, reflecting on it, evaluating it, analyzing it, etc. make something meaningful out of it in order to grow and advance.

If we leave the critical thinking part to machines, we are even more prone to being manipulated, misguided or become the victims of consequences that are based on intentional or accidental errors. We stop functioning as independent humans and become even more gullible as we already are.

This is also what the research points to.

So my bottom line is: use technology to enhance and extend your thinking abilities, not replace them. That's why care is required when using these tools. It's easy to just delegate everything to the machine. But that leaves you... empty.

(Sry for the dramatic writing style, I was just in the middle of a text adventure. :'D )

Yes.

I think we have abundant evidence that a sincere belief in alternative facts is pretty destructive.