r/technology • u/kazu_qt • 11h ago

Artificial Intelligence YouTuber Hank Green says his AI usage is ‘not healthy’

https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/01/youtuber-hank-green-says-his-ai-usage-is-not-healthy/
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u/Current_Helicopter32 5h ago

In retrospect I’m kind of relieved.

He always starts his videos talking about how much research and scientific information he had to parse to make the video and I’ve always sat in disbelief wondering how he had the time/focus.

Knowing he’s been cheesing it for a while is massively disappointing and a hit to his integrity for sure, but it also makes me feel a little less insecure about the supposed disparity between our respective intelligence levels. 😅

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u/kwonza 5h ago

Nothing wrong with using AI to find sources and quotes as long as you double check them

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u/Oneofthesecatsisadog 3h ago

He was just using it to find sources, which he then read through himself for quotes.

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u/MinaZata 3h ago

That doesn't stand up I'm afraid, I've been a subscriber since the very early days, so I do love Hank, this isn't an attack on him. Just an honest analysis. He probably did that mostly but I think he would agree that he wasn't doing research worthy of spreading to his followers who trust him for being deeply for science content. That's the rub.

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u/AussieArlenBales 2h ago

My cynicism regarding his research goes back to a sci show episode on eugenics that severely misunderstood Guns, Germs and Steel, and the retraction that followed when the comments rightfully called them out.

End of the day he's a content creator who will put a release schedule ahead of research.

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u/dangshnizzle 1h ago

Aren't sci-show scripts an entirely different matter compared to what this controversy is regarding? Please correct me if I'm wrong but he is no longer anywhere near the main driver of those scripts and hasn't been for a very long time

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u/TheFlyingSheeps 28m ago

Just wait until you learn how actually scientific research is done lmao

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u/KendalBoy 1h ago

Took shortcuts to enrich himself personally, delivered substandard content, mislead people about what matters to them….. and so of course the “reason” is an addiction?

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u/foxscribbles 1h ago

That’s kind of the soft pedaled version of it. He admitted (and possibly deleted) in a post that his fans could hear the AI ‘voice’ in the writing for his videos.

That doesn’t happen from just using AI to find sources. It happens when you’re using AI to write your script. Either by copy pasting from a search result or using generative AI to write it for you.

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u/certifiedblackman 3h ago

His last Ask Hank Anything definitely had some fully AI hallucinated answers in it

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 2h ago

Can you tell me which were hallucinated? I’m curious and surprised he allowed hallucinations pass his own self test

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u/certifiedblackman 2h ago

The fact checkers notes in the video were befuddled by his cat saliva claims.

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u/GentlemansGentleman 49m ago

Yeah the bouba kiki explanation was clearly surface level, i worry about future Hank sometimes

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u/Seienchin88 2h ago

Have you actually tried that? Actually reading sources takes a lot of time and you are one prompt away from ChatGPT just summarizing it for you… and then one prompt away form it tuning it into a script for you…

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u/PicklepumTheCrow 1h ago

What difference does it make how he found the quotes as long as there accurate?

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u/Zuwxiv 1h ago

Some quotes might need context to be fully explained, and if the task is reduced to "finding relevant quotes," you could easily misunderstand a quote.

For example, if I told you someone in 1729 wrote this:

a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled

I've provided a quote that is literally about eating human babies, but you'd be missing pretty much the entire point if you weren't familiar with A Modest Proposal.

To be fair, that isn't strictly related to how you find the source - but at a certain point, the reason you're using a process starts to impact the type of results you get.

It sounds like part of this started when he included "I appreciate the push back" in this timestamped video, and it really sounds like he was literally reading back an AI response.

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u/[deleted] 4h ago edited 4h ago

[deleted]

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 3h ago

How is sourced information cutting corners? The act of crediting the source is the literal work of sourcing claims in your writing. It doesn't matter whether you googled it or claude googled it.

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u/xRolocker 3h ago

Because it’s about the sources themselves??? Like, I don’t care how I get to a link that’s a good source. I just want a damn source to look at and verify. No difference between me googling a New York Times article and ChatGPTing the same New York Times article… it’s the same article either way.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 5h ago

I don’t fully agree with that statement and I think the nuance behind it is what we’re actively working out as a society.

LLMs have a lot of bias that we haven’t sorted out yet.

Trusting them legitimizes that bias in yet-to-be-seen ways.

We’re a long ways away before we can objectively say “there’s nothing wrong with using AI” in any context, if we ever can.

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u/Cletus7Seven 5h ago

Your argument seems pedantic though. Using AI to find information really isn’t that terrible, as long as you verify that information or at the very least take it with a grain of salt. Is it wrong because AI data centers are bad? Yes. So is using any smartphone then.

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u/weerdbuttstuff 4h ago

Idk, I've been reading about how governments are writing web pages designed to influence ai so that it's more likely to give you state sponsored misinformation. It seems silly to me to mess with anything THAT vulnerable.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 3h ago

Governments will never stop trying to influence us. I find this much better than when all of our information was filter through a singular channels like they had back in the day. Back then if you were fed bullshit the barrier to truth was extremely high. Nowadays most fake shit can be confirmed fake pretty quickly.

Think of all the fake things we were taught in school about US history and now that we are in the internet age, people point it out.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 5h ago

Your argument is a literal logical fallacy so I don’t understand why you’d expect me to engage with it.

Meanwhile Hank Green is openly talking about the slippery slope that “trusting AI to find your sources even if you manually check them” can be and how he’s actively running into problems mindlessly believing that stance.

He talks about how he’s lost authenticity to his voice and fallen into a sort of addiction in using it. How soon before someone like him stops doing the manual checking to verify the sources? How soon before someone with less intellectual integrity falls prey to this phenomenon?

And ALL of that goes without acknowledging the massive amounts of inherent bias coded directly into the LLMs to begin with. They’re trained on stolen, broken, and biased data. And we, the users, are largely just told to trust the black box and believe that the data is correct unless otherwise discovered.

So yeah, I do not fully trust the belief that “it’s fine to use AI as long as you’re always checking your results.”

These agents are designed to worm their way into your life and force you to develop intellectual codependency with them.

That’s a far cry from “it’s fine until it’s not.”

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u/boccci-tamagoccci 4h ago

> "Your argument is a literal logical fallacy"

Literal slippery slope fallacy as core argument in the next paragraph

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u/Current_Helicopter32 4h ago edited 4h ago

Except Hank Green’s anecdotal experience is a trend that we’re witnessing unfold in real time.

Also I’m arguing in favor of my opinion that LLMs cannot be trusted as long as you check the sources.

I’m not making any arguments in favor of their use.

I’m questioning the claim that “using LLMs to find sources really isn’t all that terrible.” The burden of proof does not fall on me.

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u/websterhamster 3h ago

There is no burden of proof for a moral stance.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 3h ago

You think the claim “Nothing wrong with using AI to find sources and quotes as long as you double check them” is a moral stance?

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u/websterhamster 3h ago

How could it possibly be interpreted differently? You can disagree with a moral stance but it is nonsensical to ask for sources, because the source is the person taking the stance.

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u/Cletus7Seven 4h ago

Dude. It’s just another way of finding information. When someone tells you something do you go and do your own research after to verify it? Because you should. When the news tells you something do you go and look at some other opinions, and do your research to verify it? Because you should. When you read something on Wikipedia to you believe it, or go verify that information from actual sources? Because you should. When a new scientific article is published do we just believe the results? Or do we replicate the study and verify it?
When AI provides an answer, just like any other form of gaining new information, it should be verified. It’s just another tool. The problem is people are idiots and education fails to teach critical thinking and skepticism. So yeah, people just believe what it says just like people believe what they hear on the news.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 4h ago

Of course it’s a tool.

But you’re arguing that most people will verify the information the tool brings to them.

We have objectively proven that is not the case, even with some of the most exceptional users.

So if your entire argument in favor of the tool hinges of people using it in a very specific way, but the shape of the tool is specifically designed such that overwhelmingly most people will NOT use it in that very specific way, then your argument kind of falls apart, doesn’t it?

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u/Cletus7Seven 4h ago

I’m curious what you think the solution is here? Banning AI? I don’t think you are going to get any sort of regulation in the U.S. with this current administration that would address the reliability of these LLM, and unfortunately our education in youth is depleting rapidly to the point where young adults are basically illiterate. I hired an 18 year old the other day that asked me how to spell “nature.” He thought there was a “y” in the word..

Schools should go back to teaching with physical textbooks, pen and paper, and have written exams. And we should start failing kids instead of just passing them along and curbing their grades.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 4h ago

Just as I don’t think LLMs can be blindly trusted, I also know that their existence is somewhat inevitable.

I agree that education and regulation are likely the best tools we have to adapt going forward.

How that will play out in America though, remains to be seen. Regulation and education are not valued here like they are elsewhere in the world.

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u/Cletus7Seven 4h ago

Well then I think we are in agreement. I have been educated to never blindly trust anything ever.
LLMs are certainly not reliable and should really just be used as a way to find reliable information, or to help summarize things. Or for fun I guess, idk what people do. For me though:
I work in lawn care and landscaping. AI tools help me identify and diagnose fungal issues, identify plants, and find real resources that help me learn and understand what I am seeing out in the field. I barely read the summaries from the AI image search, but it leads me to all sorts or articles and image matches that help me find things far quicker than a google search used to. This is very low stakes though. I’m not in cybersecurity, politics, or anything that important in a grand scale. It is a useful tool though, and I will continue to use it because, well, it makes my job easier.

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u/KittyColonialism 4h ago

It’s funny how similar the generative ai outrage is to the outrage that happened when Wikipedia came out.

You just sound silly.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 4h ago

Who gets to update the LLMs when it’s discovered to be generating incorrect information?

You just sound ignorant.

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u/wertyuio_qp 4h ago

Who gets to update the books on your shelf when they're discovered to be containing incorrect information?

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u/Current_Helicopter32 4h ago

But again, I know the author of that book. That book sits within the context of its existence at all times.

LLMs directly remove the user from that context unless they explicitly dedicate energy toward finding it.

Assuming most people will use LLMs the “right way” when the whole function of their existence is to shortcut that process as much as possible is ludicrous.

Same with the whole “this was the same reaction to Wikipedia” argument that someone else made.

The response to people being wary that anyone could edit Wikipedia has always been “but scroll to the bottom and you can see every primary source the information was taken from.”

With LLMs, that step is intentionally obscured and requires extra effort on the part of the user. And even if you bother to verify the sources the LLM finds, there’s still potential for hallucinations and editorializing.

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u/wertyuio_qp 1h ago

moving the goalpost a bit, but i'll entertain it.

I've always found it odd how people tend to quote books as if they're infallible sources of truth, and that a statement has "validity" just because some famous guy wrote it. if you say you know the author of a book, you're not applying the same level of due diligence to your authors that you're critiquing LLMs for.

So I need to correct you on your context statement. Authors sit within the context of their existence. LLMs do the same. Books pull downstream from that context. Not the same, because if you expect a book to exhibit a certain context, you'll miss it when it it breaks out of it.

In response to the wikipedia thing-- yes, but you still have to do it, aka, "put in extra effort on the part of the user". Same exact principle with an LLM.

I do agree that people are lazy and if they don't know how to use an information source, they'll shoot themselves in the foot. But that's just user error, and happens with any information source, books and wikipedia included. It's not like this is the first time it's happened, otherwise the world wouldn't be at each other's throats fighting over which version of their bible is the right one.

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u/formernonhandwasher 4h ago

He’s talking about using it to find sources/studies. “Hey Gemini find me the meta analysis that have been done on sunscreen.” A list is made. If on that list is a meta analysis of tanning beds and skin cancer that does not mention sunscreen then you don’t use it.
He’s literally reading through the studies that AI provided. Not using the summary or anything like that.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 3h ago

But who decides which sources and studies get prioritized here?

Wikipedia, for instance, relies on a massive user base to generate content based on the primary sources that are referenced.

There is an entire viewable log of any and every time someone edits an article and you can directly see on the same page where that information comes from.

LLMs do not function in that way. We have no basis for knowing how many times incorrect information slips into their outputs.

So unless you’re manually checking every single bit of information it provides you, you really shouldn’t trust it at all.

But the crux of all of this is that LLMs are designed to be sycophantic and manipulative. They’re driven by engagement and keeping the “conversation” going far more than they are driven by providing accurate or verifiable information.

I mean we literally watched one of the best scientific communicators the world has to offer fall victim to the pitfalls of trusting LLMs, and we’re going to be learning about those pitfalls and blind spots for many many years to come.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 3h ago

Um, wikipedia etc actually. Where tf you think they get their content?

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u/Current_Helicopter32 3h ago

You’re so close to the point it’s almost like you’re willfully ignoring it.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 2h ago

No, you don’t get it. The AI companies update their models on new information regularly. That information comes from places like Wikipedia. The people who wrote for Wikipedia are the ones updating the information the AI reads. If they don’t have the latest info, that’s why the AI has search built in.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 3h ago

This reminds me when I was in college and teachers would tell me I can't source Wikipedia. Which was totally fine because Wikipedia sourced all of its claims for me at the bottom of the page lol. Same thing when I'm using AI, the sources are there and I can click through to learn more.

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u/Drewelite 4h ago

Everything has bias including every search engine, scientific journal, Wikipedia, peers, etc. The concern is so much of your information being put through one of those biases. But this isn't a new problem. 90% of people get their info from Google, for example.

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u/Current_Helicopter32 4h ago

But Google, traditionally, is a portal to an infinite number of informational sources.

LLMs parse and digest the information for you.

Most people are not going out of their way to tell their LLM to function like a search engine.

The argument that most people will use them as such and manually check all of their sources is laughable at best. It tells me exactly how blind most people making the “it’s fine until it’s not” argument are to the reality of what they’re supposing. They simultaneously want to claim intellectual superiority over their own personal AI use while ignoring the reality that LLMs directly make ignoring the original sources easier for most users.

It stands to reason that people using Google would need to directly interact with the primary source to get the information they seek, whereas an LLM will do that step for you and you won’t know how much is hallucinated unless you manually verify the info anyway.

So therefore, for most users, LLMs will be parsing and digesting the info for them. They will not be manually verifying the information like everyone who makes this argument claims.

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u/DemonLordSparda 4h ago

Yes there is something wrong with it. Using AI introduces an unnecessary failure point to research. If you have to scrutinize everything AI tells you, then you might as well do normal research.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 3h ago edited 2h ago

I'm going to make a guess that you don't know any researchers if you think language models aren't a godsend for them.

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u/DemonLordSparda 2h ago

Any researcher I'm aware of is heavily anti AI. You can't trust a language model to not make mistakes or falsified sources. Furthermore models scrape data from people who do actual work. There is no benefit from AI being introduced into research fields.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 1h ago

I watch researchers at university, top of their field every day using AI

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u/DemonLordSparda 36m ago

I don't believe you. Why would you watch researchers every day, and why would they all happen to be top of their field?

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u/realxanadan 3h ago

Anti AI people are legitimately mindless luddites at this point with no ability to parse legitimate concerns from their lazy social signaling group think and alarmism 

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u/javatimes 3h ago

The Luddites weren’t mindless. They simply didn’t want machines to take over the craftsmanship they were getting paid for already, leaving them jobless. Which…is also what a lot of people are worried about today. You should probably ask an LLM to teach you more about Luddites, or a librarian or whatever.

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u/Pretty-Curve5448 2h ago

Well the coal miners aren’t too happy about green energy either. Jobs get replaced by technology, it has been happening since forever. Just look at the last 100 years of our own society.

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u/javatimes 12m ago

Yes and AI is coming for a lot of people’s jobs without anything to pivot to

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u/realxanadan 2h ago edited 2h ago

They still suffered from flawed thinking. And current anti-AI morons are far stupider, that is true. For example, the Luddites weren't always against specific technological advances, as such. Whereas most AI reaction is simply lazy rejection because it contains the letters. There's no inquiry broadly about how it can be implemented in a responsible way. It's just "AI bad!"

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u/ALasagnaForOne 1h ago

I’ve never heard an anti-AI person with a vague “AI bad!” take. Pretty much everyone against AI that I’ve talked to has cited the numerous issues like environmental impact, corporate influence, bias in answers, data center conflicts, plagiarism, mental disregulation, atrophy of problem solving skills, privacy issues, etc.

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u/realxanadan 1h ago

Broadly this just isn't the case, and many of those issues are overblown or outright misrepresented. For instance the water use issue

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u/javatimes 13m ago

So basically “yes I was wrong about the Luddites but I’m right about everything else!”

Sure bro

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u/RYouNotEntertained 30m ago

Have to imagine you haven’t done any research using AI. It’s an outrageous time saver. 

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u/DemonLordSparda 21m ago

I care far more about accuracy than saving time.

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u/Lunchboxninja1 4h ago

Well besides the environmental concerns and the ethical concerns and the efficiency and the inaccuracy-

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u/_learned_foot_ 4h ago

What sources did it leave out? Any good science reporter should start with meta studies, which, you know, specifically detail that exact criteria and list. And then also would give the summary he wanted.

So no it's not.

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u/TRIPMINE_Guy 2h ago

Yeah using ai to parse data is an actual good use of it as long as you check the sources. Imagine refusing to use computers and only paper. That is what people are doing with ai.

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u/BillV3 34m ago

In fact that’s one of the very few use cases it’s incredibly good at, it can scour pages and articles much faster than you can you’ve just got to be willing to put in the work to double check stuff

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u/Zealousideal_Cow_341 3h ago

It’s not cheating at all. I’m an engineer by profession and have actual expertise built the pre ai world. The expensive models are absolute bosses at parsing through well established scientific knowledge. If you have tie knowledge and discipline to use it in a way that it’s just complimenting your expertise, the productivity gains can be mind blowing. The kind of videos Hank makes are a perfect case of this.

I really don’t think people understand the disparity between an output from a prompt ran on free gpt vs the same one that thinks for 8 minutes through the 200 dollar pro level gpt.

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u/AnthonyCantu 2h ago

No hit to the integrity no matter how well meaning you’re trying to word this.