Which is why I use LLMs to generate keywords for niche subjects. LLMs are pretty good at throwing out a lot of related terminology, which I can use to find the actually relevant, niche information.

I wouldn't use one to learn about a niche subject, but I would use one to help me get familiar w/ the domain to find better resources to learn about it.

than reading an actual intro on an unfamiliar topic

The LLM helps me know what to look for in order to find that unfamiliar topic.

For example, I was tasked to support a file format that's common in a very niche field and never used elsewhere, and unfortunately shares an extension with a very common file format, so searching for useful data was nearly impossible. So I asked the LLM for details about the format and applications of it, provided what I knew, and it spat out a bunch of keywords that I then used to look up more accurate information about that file format. I only trusted the LLM output to the extent of finding related, industry-specific terms to search up better information.

Likewise, when looking for libraries for a coding project, none really stood out, so I asked the LLM to compare the popular libraries for solving a given problem. The LLM spat out a bunch of details that were easy to verify (and some were inaccurate), which helped me narrow what I looked for in that library, and the end result was that my search was done in like 30 min (about 5 min dealing w/ LLM, and 25 min checking the projects and reading a couple blog posts comparing some of the libraries the LLM referred to).

I think this use case is a fantastic use of LLMs, since they're really good at generating text related to a query.

It’s going to say something plausible, and you tautologically are not in a position to verify it.

I absolutely am though. If I am merely having trouble recalling a specific fact, asking the LLM to generate it is pretty reasonable. There are a ton of cases where I'll know the right answer when I see it, like it's on the tip of my tongue but I'm having trouble materializing it. The LLM might spit out two wrong answers along w/ the right one, but it's easy to recognize which is the right one.

I'm not going to ask it facts that I know I don't know (e.g. some historical figure's birth or death date), that's just asking for trouble. But I'll ask it facts that I know that I know, I'm just having trouble recalling.

The right use of LLMs, IMO, is to generate text related to a topic to help facilitate research. It's not great at doing the research though, but it is good at helping to formulate better search terms or generate some text to start from for whatever task.

general search on the web?

I agree, it's not great for general search. It's great for turning a nebulous question into better search terms.