People have always looked for patterns to explain the universe and to predict the future. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning” is an adage predicting the weather.

It is an increasingly familiar experience. A request for help to a large language model (LLM) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT is promptly met by a response that is confident, coherent and just plain wrong.

David Adam is a writer in Hertford, near London. Certain aspects of scientific life do not lend themselves to working from home. Archaeologist Adrià Breu, who studies neolithic pottery at the ...