> I'm pretty sure they are actively trained to avoid it.

I'm not sure who is doing what training exactly, but I can say that (inconsistently!) some of my attempts to get it to solve problems that have not yet actually been solved, e.g. the Collatz conjecture, have it saying it doesn't know how to solve the problem.

Other times it absolutely makes stuff up; fortunately for me, my personality includes actually testing what it says, so I didn't fall into the sycophantic honey trap and take it seriously when it agreed with my shower thoughts, and definitely didn't listen when it identified a close-up photo of some solanum nigrum growing next to my tomatoes as being also tomatoes.

> Besides, like, what would you do if you asked your $200/mo AI something and it blanked on you?

I'd rather it said "IDK" than made some stuff up. Them making stuff up is, as we have seen from various news stories about AI, dangerous.

It's not hard to get them to say "I don't know", and they will do so regularly. It's hard to get them to say "I don't know" reliably (i.e. to say it when they don't actually know and to not say it when they do know). And in general even for statements or tasks they do 'know' (i.e. normally get right), they will occasionally get wrong.