Just copy-paste me! Assessing the risks of epistemic dependence on Large Language Models

LLMs’ exceptional capabilities of language translation, sentence completion, sentiment analysis, information retrieval, and much more make them useful in a vast array of contexts, from customer service to scientific research. With these great technological possibilities come many unanswered questions and several concerns. We focus on the use of LLMs in epistemic contexts, broadly construed, meaning those contexts in which an LLM is used by a subject in order to fulfil their epistemic goals, such as acquiring justification, increasing their knowledge or understanding or developing argumentative work. By examining the epistemic context of LLMs, we aim to give an account of some of the epistemological risks associated with their usage.