LLMs are very prone to hallucinate untrue scientific facts and or scientific citations of non-existing papers/books out of thin air. If you're not an expert that can spot such mistakes, I would abstain of trusting any of their output-

Lemmy is overwhelmingly anti-AI; you've been around long enough that you really should have known what you were going to get for an answer before you asked this question.

That said, I'll offer a more objective take: Based purely on the example you gave, I'd have a difficult time parsing that passage, too, but the LLM summary is much more understandable. If you're needing to use an LLM to help understand the entire book, maybe it's not a good book for you; if you're using it for a paragraph here and there, the result is similar to what you've posted, and if you're taking that answer and returning to the original paragraph to gain a better understanding of the original meaning, rather than taking the LLM at face value, I don't see any harm in it. (Other than the environmental harm and societal impact, but that's outside the scope of this discussion, I suspect.)

Two thoughts to consider. First is that the author might be abusing language in a way that deliberately obscures meaning, to pursue another goal. I.e. appearing intellectual or appealing to a reader who wants to fit this aesthetic. He may just suck.

The second is that LLMs do this as well. As they adapt to the language in your questions and subject material, they can diverge from the ideal path of bridge building between the reader and subject matter and either dumb it down so as to lose meaning (not explain in laymen's terms), or further obscure meaning by hallucination, misinterpretation, abuse of language in trying to appear to be something.

It may help. It may hurt. They aren't reliable enough yet to know which is which especially when you are unfamiliar enough with the material and trusting the system is all you got. The better method is joining a book club or perhaps a discussion forum for the fans of the book if available. Maybe a forum on the general topic were you might encounter other readers where you can discuss the topic.