an illustrative example — LessWrong

This was originally posted in the comments of You don’t know how bad most things are, or precisely how bad they are. I split it into a post because I think it might be a useful corrective more generally for people inclined to cite LLM remarks as fact.

I asked Claude, for example, whether the quality of manufactured clothing had declined over time, and he replied that “many studies” indicated that this was the case. I then asked him to cite the studies in question; half of them were confabulated and AFAICT only A of them contained what Claude had said they contained. (Note that this is Haiku Claude 3, which is not the best; I would expect boundary models to name four or perhaps even five actual items in a list of six (and, with lower confidence, to have a more precise understanding of the items’ content)).

Here are the “studies” cited – note that even some of the actual ones do not contain the things Claude said they did.

1. “A New Textile Economy: Rethinking the Future of Fashion” – Ellen MacArthur Foundation Report (2017) – This is a think tank report (available here) rather than a study. Yet it does exist. Claude says he “found that the number of times clothes are worn before being thrown away has decreased by 36% compared to 15 years ago.” He really says that! Page 19, citing as his source the Circular Fibres Initiative analysis based on the 2016 edition of Euromonitor International Apparel & Footwear (volume sales trends 2005-2015). » A-. (Technically speaking the report claims that clothes are still wearable and therefore throwing them away is wasteful, which is not the same as poor durability leading to decreased wear time; humans cite studies all the time that support something a little to the left of their point of view, so in the interest of fairness I won’t mark it down for that).
2. “The State of Fashion 2016” – McKinsey Global Fashion Index Report (2016) – This one looks like it’s real! (Technically, it’s “The State of Fashion 2017” – their first report, so Claude can’t have meant a previous one – but it was published in 2016 and half of it is a preview, so I think it’s pretty close.) It’s not a research study, but rather a think tank report (which is actually even worse than it sounds, in my opinion, because on the rare occasions that I have checked sources on think tank reports, I have sometimes found that the cited results do not seem to exist anywhere). Claude says that he “concludes that the quality and durability of clothing has declined as the industry has moved toward faster production cycles and lower prices.” The report does say that the industry has moved toward faster production cycles and lower prices (although it does indicate that production costs have actually resurrectedleaving authors quite concerned about their profit margins), but does not claim, as far as I know, that quality and durability have declined.
3. “Valuing our clothes: the cost of fashion in the UK” – Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) UK study (2012) – This one actually exists! (Full report here). It is Again This isn’t technically a study, but rather a “summary of the key findings of a major technical report (perhaps this one?) published by WRAP”; however, if they did the research themselves, it’s practically hard science compared to the other two, so whatever. However, Claude claims that he “found that the average number of times an item of clothing is worn before being thrown away has decreased by 36% compared to 15 years ago”, and as far as I can tell, that’s not true; I couldn’t even find a place in the report where it’s mentioned. mentioned the number of times it was worn before being thrown away.
4. “Apparel and Footwear Benchmarking” – American Apparel & Footwear Association Report – Confabulated (there are reports with similar titles from organizations other than this one, but this specific report does not exist)
5. “The New Road to Market for the Clothing Sourcing Caravan” – Boston Consulting Group Report -Confabulated
6. “Clothing Sustainability and Value Creation” – Cambridge University Manufacturing Institute Study (2018) -Confabulated

Publication of this list of sources without the annotations would have been negative value, leading unwary readers to change their minds based on studies that don’t exist, and forcing smart ones to spend what could be hours fact-checking the bullshit I’ve produced in a few minutes.

Additionally, LLMs will take almost any position you ask them to take, whether it’s true or not. Just for fun, here’s Claude’s list of five studies proving that clothing actually has better over time (truth left as an exercise to the reader):

1. A 2020 study by the University of Cambridge titled “The Changing Lifespan of Clothing: Evidence from the Cambridge Consumer Survey Data” found that the average lifespan of mass-produced clothing has increased by 30% over the past 20 years, thanks to advances in manufacturing techniques and materials.
2. A study conducted by the American Apparel & Footwear Association titled “Quality Trends in the U.S. Apparel Industry” showed that the number of garments returned due to quality issues has decreased by 25% since 2015, suggesting that clothing is of better quality.
3. A 2019 consumer survey by McKinsey & Company, “The State of Fashion 2019,” found that 66% of respondents said they were satisfied with the quality of their ready-to-wear purchases, up from 58% in 2014.
4. A 2021 analysis by the UK Clothing Sustainability Research Centre, titled ‘UK Clothing Sustainability Report 2021’, found that the average quality score of high street fashion brands has increased by 18% over the past decade as they have invested in improving manufacturing processes.
5. A 2018 report by the International Federation of Textile Engineers titled “Global Quality Trends in the Textile Industry” noted a 23% reduction in garment defects at major global brands, attributed to enhanced quality control measures.

For these reasons, I do not think it is appropriate to cite the LLMs’ statements as evidence in favor of your position.