I see a lot of surprised and angry responses from Redditors whose posts and comments are removed from this sub either for use of LLM search engine and other generative AI responses, or for recommending people use them to answer their questions. This facet of the Substantive Rule on this sub has a parallel in a similar rule on the Boglheads forum: "AI-generated content is not a dependable substitute for first-hand knowledge or reference to authoritative sources. Its use is therefore discouraged." Many folks, especially on the younger side, are so accustomed to using ChatGPT or Gemini that it may be their default way to get any question answered. This is problematic in the field of investing for several reasons that are worth noting: LLMs are not firsthand sources with organic knowledge of the subject matter. They are aggregating reference sources and popular opinion and thus prone to both composition mistakes and sourcing material mistakes or biases. LLMs remain susceptible to "hallucinations" (made-up ideas) and can be not just false, but confidently false which is highly misleading. LLMs' response quality is very sensitive to the quality of the prompt. Users who are somewhat knowledgeable about a subject and also skilled at crafting good queries for AI searches are far more likely to get accurate and useful results - especially for research purposes or for reference to stored personal data - while the uninformed are more likely to get wrong or misleading answers to basic questions. Policies excluding AI-generated content are not meant to be a referendum on the overall current or future value of AI as a tool for personal finance and investing, which is obviously enormous and transformative, especially for those who know how to best utilize it. It is a question of whether AI responses make for substantive content on this sub, and whether it is an appropriate resource to direct strangers and novices to. At the moment, the answer to both is a resounding no. On the one hand, people come to Reddit primarily for human interaction and original content, so posting AI responses or directing people to AI search engines is of minimal contributive value - folks can go chat with bots themselves if that's what they want. But as to whether AI search engines are appropriate references for finance and investing info, here are some articles from the past year that support their exclusion as a default response: AI Tools Are Getting Better, but They Still Struggle With Money Advice (Money 2/13/25): "ChatGPT was correct 65% of the time, "incomplete and/or misleading" 29% of the time and wrong 6% of the time." Is Talking to ChatGPT About Finance Ever a Good Idea? (White Coat Investor 6/22/25): "LLM responses had multiple arithmetic mistakes that made them unreliable. More fundamental than arithmetic errors, the LLM responses demonstrated that they do not have the common sense needed to recognize when their answers are obviously wrong." Financial advice from AI comes with risks (University of St. Gallen, 1/7/25): "LLMs consistently suggested portfolios with higher risks than the benchmark index fund. They suggested: [more U.S. stocks; tech and consumer bias; chasing hot stocks; more stock picking and actively managed investments; higher costs.]" Note: the views expressed here are largely my own, and I am not affiliated in any way with the Bogleheads forum nor the Bogleheads Center for Financial Literacy, but I invite others (including the mods on this sub) to weigh in with their own opinions.   submitted by   /u/Kashmir79 [link]   [comments]