Because this is just researching, only if you double check the sources like you normally would.

This. This is what I do

Heh

I find LLMs very useful in my professional (senior IT consultant) and hobby IT life.

You're safe.

It's like a new category of codependence. The problem isn't using AI, it's that it's maximally available and supportive

Every time you have a decision to make, it's easy to consult the AI. It will support basically anything you say, it will help lay out the arguments, and it'll give you a recommendation

The parts of your brain that make decisions and evaluate situations will physically atrophy if you don't use them

First, there’s more to his arguments than not having to remember things. You have to compare written knowledge to oral tradition. If you read something and have questions, the words aren’t going to magically change to something understandable. If you are learning from someone and have questions, you can ask that someone and they can rephrase it in a new way that’s easier to understand. In a similar vein, if you read something written long ago like Shakespeare the language will have changed such that it’s more difficult to understand. If his stories had been passed down by word of mouth the meaning could be kept while the words used to communicate those meanings evolve with the language. Of course writing has many benefits that make it worthwhile, but pretending that the only argument against it is that it stores information on a page instead of your brain is wrong.

Second, people calling a new thing bad in the past has zero relevance to people calling a different new thing bad in the present. Plato/Socrates had no word generating machines in their time, so what do their opinions have to do with a word generating machine?

The more I learn about Plato the less I like him. If I want to remember something the best way is literally to write it down, it doesn't matter if I throw away the note afterwards, my brain keeps the information much better.