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The 42 problem in AI-assisted research
Giovanni Spitale1, Federico Germani1,2
1ITE Lab, Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Elife
|October 14, 2026
Abstract:
Large language models are very good at providing concise answers. But if we only see the answer without knowing the original question or the context behind it, that answer may not be very useful. The important issue is not simply how much information an AI summary removes but whether we can still recover the missing context. Thus, AI literature tools should also report how much information was removed and how recoverable their omissions are.