How AI Helps: post #673 — TG.ME

Finding a package suggested by AI in a registry proves only that the name has an owner, not that the dependency is legitimate

An assistant writes pip install plausible-helper. Yesterday the name was missing. Today it has a registry page and one release. The hallucination did not become correct; its address got an owner.

In the USENIX Security 2025 study, hallucinated suggestions averaged at least 5.2% for commercial models and 21.7% for open-source models across its prompts and 576,000 samples—not the odds for every coding answer.

Before any install, make a Dependency Passport: need; official docs; registry repository match; maintainer and release history; install scripts; transitive dependencies. If identity is unproven, choose NEEDS SECURITY REVIEW or NO DEPENDENCY.
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August 27, 2026 129