# Hallucination Is a Defect in Search and a Feature in Discovery by Richard Socher > Whether AI hallucination is useful depends on the task. Search engines require accurate answers and citations; scientific discovery requires novel hypotheses, proteins, and molecular combinations. The same generative freedom can be a defect in retrieval and a feature in invention. > **— Adapted from Richard Socher**, *MOONSHOTS Live, October 2026* ## Sources and Context - **Recording or publication:** [MOONSHOTS Live at 1:42:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Blyb1D927pM&t=6145s) — The poster text is an explicit non-verbatim adaptation assembled from the source excerpts below. It preserves the speaker's argument while removing spoken-language filler, restoring the subject, and completing the mechanism or consequence needed for independent use. - **Exact transcript excerpt at [1:42:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Blyb1D927pM&t=6145s):** “I mean, it of course depends totally on the context, right? If you want innovation, uh, you want the AI to hallucinate novel ideas, novel combinations of amino acids to create new proteins to solve, uh, new problems, uh, and so on. Uh, but of course, in the s-context of a search, uh, engine, uh, you don't usually want any hallucinations. And, you know, Google and others have, uh, taken a long time to catch up to even you.com with much less resources on, on reducing hallucinations, having more accurate answers, having c-correct citations. Um, I think what's interesting for Google here is that they realize that in terms of their business model, they don't necessarily need super intelligence. They just-- people don't come to Google to ask, "Solve the Riemann hypothesis for me." You know? Like, uh, you, you-- they-- you just ask quick questions, "What's a good restaurant? Where do I fix, uh, this and that?" Like, um, and so not-- like, your business model kind of has to align with more and more intelligence being super-duper important. A lot of emails, like there's some emails that, like in Gmail, right, that would require super intelligence to answer, like really hard emails with complex decisions and so on, but the vast majority of stuff you do on Gmail and on Google doesn't require super intelligence.” - **Reconciled source dossier:** [[research/ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots|ASI and RSI Timeline Research Moonshots]] — preserves broadcast order, speaker reconciliation, editorial conventions, and the surrounding argument from which this Reminder was promoted. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Article:** [[articles/Mechanistic Intelligence Is Humanity's Greatest Liberation|Mechanistic Intelligence Is Humanity's Greatest Liberation]] - **Article:** [[articles/Longevity Escape Velocity|Longevity Escape Velocity]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Richard Socher|Richard Socher]] - [[wiki/Automated Hypothesis Generation|Automated Hypothesis Generation]] - [[wiki/Scientific Acceleration|Scientific Acceleration]] ## Share on Social Media ``` Whether AI hallucination is useful depends on the task. Search engines require accurate answers and citations; scientific discovery requires novel hypotheses, proteins, and molecular combinations. The same generative freedom can be a defect in retrieval and a feature in invention. — Adapted from Richard Socher, MOONSHOTS Live, October 2026 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-richard-socher-hallucination-is-a-defect-in-search-and-a-feature-in-discovery ```