I asked ChatGPT to look at a proof, here's what happened...

Jan 12 2026, 05:41

I saw a few papers on arXiv recently that were very clearly prepared by asking ChatGPT or some other GenAI to analyse an idea and write a paper. Of course, the papers contained obvious mistakes, but obvious to whom?

It is very well-known to experts on any topic who interacted with GenAI that one of the reasons they are so terrible is their need to appease the user. This is such a wonderful question you're asking!, and its fellow responses. We all know that although most of the questions students will ask us are not stupid, there can be stupid questions, and it's easy to feed them to an AI and see what kind of nonsense they spit back. Part of the reason, of course, is to see how they respond to the question (or the assertion itself) with praise or gentle disagreement.